ciassiiX.OJ_l 

Book.-. 



Gop\iightN _; 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



i 



SUNSET VIEWS 



IN THREE PARTS. 



BY 

/ 

BISHOP O. P. FITZGERALD. 



f 



U I am a fart of all that I have met" — Tennyson 



SECOND THOUSAND. 



Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex.: 
Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. 
Barbee & Smith, Agents. 
1901. 

U 




THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Receiver 

JUL. 27 1901 

Copyright entry 
J CLASS CL, XXc No. 

copy a 



Entered, according- to Act of Congress, in the year 1900, 
By the Book Agents of the M. E. Church, South, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO BE READ OR SKIPPED. 

In most of the things that they do, men act from 
mixed motives. Whether the making of this book 
shall prove an exception to this general rule, the reader 
will judge. Of this I am sure : The chief motive is to 
magnify the mercy of God. And the thought that these 
pages may make a channel for his grace to flow into oth- 
er souls warms my heart as I pen these words. 

Several kindly voices had said to me : " Tell the 
story of the men and times vou have seen, in your own 
way." The thought took hold of my mind, and almost 
grew into a purpose. I have not the vanity or the 
idiocv to think that my life is worth writing. I would 
not do it if I could. Xo man who tells the storv of 
his own life ever tells all. There are reserves of self- 
respect and privacy that are sacred to all save the hope- 
lessly vulgar and vile. I have no grudges to settle. 
I do not wish to leave a line written by this hand that 
will give pain to any human heart. Posthumous mal- 
ice is the meanest of all : it combines both malignitv 
and cowardice. The Christian statute of limitations 
applies to all grudges in noble souls, when time has 
come to cool the heat of passion or to clarify the judg- 
ment. Death cancels all debts of reprisal. 

A week ago I decided, if so God willed, that I would 
print these chapters in their present form. This final 
decision was made just as the setting sun flushed with 
glory the hills that encircle Nashville, the beloved city 
whose people are like kinsfolk to me, from whose homes 
so many elect souls dear to me have already gone up to 
the city that hath foundations whose maker and builder 
is God. 



CONFIDENTIAL. 

The writing of my proposed book, to be entitled "The Men 
and the Times I Have Seen, ,? was abandoned for good reasons 
shortly after it was announced. Let friendly readers be duly 
thankful. The other sort— well, they will acquiesce. 



SUB-PREFACE. 

To burn or to print these pages — that was the ques- 
tion with me when, thinking the time of my departure 
was at hand, I was setting my affairs in order. Much 
stuff, such as it was, was consumed, but these pages 
were spared for reasons that may be guessed at by the 
discerning. My old friends will be indulgent. If any 
of them shall conclude that I have ventured once too 
often as a bookmaker, so be it. I have not been the 
first, nor will I be the last, to err in this way. 

The Author. 



FOREWORD. 

That vision of the sunsetting came to me in a dream 
of the night. It was a vision that excelled all that 
mine eye had seen in all my waking hours. I stood 
on the top of a peak, high and lifted up above ten 
thousand lesser ones grouped below and all around it, 
all bright with the glorv of a cloudless sunset. The 
silence was holv. The note of a song bird, the chirp 
of an insect, or the flutter of a butterfly's wing would 
have jarred on my ear then and there. I had sunk to 
sleep after a clay of weakness and pain — thinking, 
thinking, thinking, and praving : thinking that I might 
next awake in the spirit-world or linger on here onlv 
to suffer, and praving that grace might be given me 
to go or to wait, as it pleased God. The vision came 
when it was needed bv the soul that clung to God and 
was sweetly tuned by him for its touch. I awoke 
with a blessedness in my spirit that cannot be put into 
words. A still, small voice whispered to my inner ear : 
"At evening- time it shall be liofht." And it is. 

The title of this book was born of that vision. The 
blessing of it abides. O. P. F. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

To Be Read or Skipped iii 

Confidential iv 

Sub-preface v 

Foreword vii 

PART I.: BACKWARD GLANCES. 

Blood Will Tell, but Not All 3 

An Early Start 9 

My First Schooling 15 

A Sad Night Ride 21 

How Methodism Kept Its Hold 27 

Taking Shape 33 

Formative Influences 39 

Four Old-time Revivalists 47 

A Unique Pedagogical Experience 55 

In Richmond in the Forties 61 

Afloat 69 

A Turning Point. 77 

Initiated 83 

My Environment. 89 

My First Sermon 97 

Preaching to the Blacks 103 

Sent to Savannah. 107 

Savannah. 113 

To California 119 

On the Pacific Side 127 

California As We Found It.. 135 

Those Early Californians. 141 

Some Preachers 149 

(xi) 



xii Contents. 

PAGE 

Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism 159 

The Old Panel. 169 

A Midwinter Meditation 179 

A Little Note 180 

PART II.: THE PLATFORM. 

Dreams 185 

A Man Wanted 197 

Finished 211 

PART III.: THE PULPIT. 

The Heavenly Vision 227 

Meroz 239 

A Xeglected Study 243 

A Talk About Talk 253 

A Fresh Start 261 

Spiritual Gymnastics 269 

The Experimental Test , 283 

The Holiness of God's House 291 

The Preacher and What He Preaches 301 

A Successful Man's Testimony 311 

The Sufferer's Secret 319 

What Methodism Stands for To-day. 323 

Jesus, the Life 333 



PART I. 



Backward Glances. 

(xlii) 



BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL. 



BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL 

BLOOD will tell. From Adam and Eve 
down to this day, this has been an ac- 
cepted truism. From Abraham to the 
latest born inheritors of titles or dollars, 
men have loved to air or invent their 
pedigrees. Our family was like other families in 
this respect. The lower the family fortunes sunk 
— and they sank to a point that was very low at 
one time — -the more they had to say as to what 
they had been in earlier days. Perspective smoothes 
genealogies as well as landscapes. Distance lends 
enchantment to the view where the imagination 
gilds the summits of vision. It is well that this is 
so. There is enough that is petty and pitiful in 
our everyday life to give us cause for thankfulness 
for the glamour that is on the past, as well as for the 
glory that through faith and hope gild the future. 

My parents — Richard Fitzgerald and Martha 
Hooper — were both Virginians, and belonged, at 
least in a chronological sense, to the first families. 
I could wish that I knew the verity of the tradition 
that this Virginia branch of the Fitzgeralds was 
akin to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was a martyr 
for the cause of freedom for Ireland. There is no 
nobler name in Irish history. This is saying much. 
The noblest Irishmen are among the noblest of 
earth's true nobility, whether titled or untitled. A 
mean Irishman is the meanest of men. Irishmen 
are extremists, patriots of the first quality or trai- 
tors of blackest dye ; martyrs glad to die for truth 
or ready to sell it to the highest bidder. God bless 

(3) 



4 



Sunset Views. 



old Ireland ! God bless her children wherever 
they may wander to the latest generation ! 

The families of the Hoopers, the Powells, the 
Goodes, the Grants, the Irbys were branches of the 
family tree. My maternal grandmother was a mar- 
vel of energy in business and fervor in religion. 
She had every soul on the plantation aroused at 
daybreak and ready for work. Her gift in prayer 
was mighty, At a camp meeting her prayers 
seemed to move heaven and earth. She ran a dis- 
tillery famous for the quality of its whisky. There 
is no question of her sincerity as. a Christian. At 
that time members of the various branches of the 
Church of Christ took their drams as a matter of 
course, ran distilleries, and 4 'treated" in election 
campaigns. The stillhouse and " meetinghouse " 
were owned and managed by the same persons as 
a matter of course. The Methodists were among 
the first to make war against whisky in that region, 
as elsewhere in this land. The fires of that old 
stillhouse have long since ceased to burn, the very 
site of it is lost; but the songs of the Methodists 
are still heard among those Dan River hills. The 
dear old mother in Israel now sees more clearly 
what few could see in her day — the sin and curse 
of strong drink — and when we join in the new 
song in heaven, she will be there too. "The ideas 
and standards have changed, and changed for the 
better, during the intervening decades. God is 
God, and this world is his world. 

An illustration of the reign of God's grace in the 
world may come in just here. Among the negroes 
on the farm was 6 ' Uncle Lunnon, " who in an earlier 
and darker time came over from Africa as a compul- 
sory immigrant in a British slave ship. He w 7 as al- 
most as strong as a gorilla, and very profane and 
hot-tempered. But he was honest and truthful. 



Blood Will Tell, but Not AIL 



5 



He lived to be one hundred and twenty years old — 
the oldest man of any color that I ever saw. The 
most remarkable fact concerning Uncle Lunnon 
was his conversion in the last year of his life. 
By the grace of God he was brought under deep 
conviction by this thought which came into his 
mind: 66 I have been faithful to my earthly mars- 
ter, but I've been a mean nigger toward my heav- 
enly Marster. I've lived longer than any nigger I 
ever heard of; in my prime I was stronger than 
any man, black or white, I ever met. But I've 
been a cussin' and not a prayin' man all my life. 
I am a mean nigger." So, to use his own lan- 
guage, Uncle Lunnon put the case to himself. In 
genuine penitence he bowed before God, and 
helped by the counsel and prayers of my uncle, 
Bannister Fitzgerald, Uncle Lunnon was led to 
lay hold of the hope set before sinners in the gos- 
pel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit itself 
maketh intercession for us. If any channel is 
left open in a human soul, the grace of God will 
flow in. 

Heredity is a potent factor in every human life. 
Free agency is also a fact. Heredity may give a 
trend upward or downward, but free agency de- 
termines the movement. Not fatality, but free 
agency, fixes destiny. The rule of judgment is 
equitable. The Judge is infallible. Where little 
is given, little is required; and where much is 
given, much is required. Lack of effort is the 
only ground of condemnation of any human soul. 
The slothful servant, not the one less gifted, is the 
one who went into outer darkness — not only by the 
sentence of the Judge, but by the drift of his own 
indolence, or by the perversity of his own will. 
No soul ever perished in any other way. 



AN EARLY START. 



AN EARLY START. 



WHEN two days old, I came into the 
Church of Christ in a sense good and 
true, and have been in it in some 
sense until now. Membership with 
me means membership forever. The 
Church militant merges into the Church trium- 
phant. The Church is the one organization on 
earth in which membership never lapses. The 
reader understands my meaning when I say that I 
came into the Church when two days old— that is 
to say, I was then dedicated to God in baptism. 
Dr. Abram Penn, of the Virginia Conference, was 
the administrator. The second member of my 
" given" or Christian name is Penn, and was 
given for that man of God, whose memory is 
blessed. After pouring or sprinkling upon my 
head the crystal drops that symbolize the promised 
grace that cleanses the soul through the atoning 
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he knelt at the 
bedside and prayed that the man-child might live 
before the Lord ; that he might be a disciple of 
Jesus; that he might be a Methodist preacher. "I 
felt the answer," said my mother to me with wet 
eyes in a low voice that I seem to hear now as I 
write the words. She felt the answer — and so 
have I all my life. Christians used to talk that 
way in those days concerning prayer. They be- 
lieved that the prayer of faith touches God, and that 
God can and does touch the petitioner and the sub- 
ject of the prayer at the same moment. The old 
Book seems to put it the same way. Many Christians 
reach this level at times in their lives. It is a high 

(9) 



10 



Sunset Views. 



plane: up there the air is very pure and the light 
is clear-shining. My mother had that sort of faith. 
According to her faith it was done unto her: she 
lived to know that the boy-child she gave to God 
in the baptismal covenant was a minister of the 
gospel of Jesus Christ. My dear, Christian mother! 
She was said to be wonderfully beautiful in her 
youth. To me she was always beautiful. She 
was a woman of many sorrows. The last time 
I saw her the marks of age and pain and grief 
were on her face. I shall see her again, clothed in 
beauty greater than that of her bridal morning, up 
yonder in that land where the weary rest. She 
was a sweet singer, and her songs were mostly in 
the minor key. She had sorrows of her own, and 
was touched by all the sorrow of the circles in 
which she moved, from the highest to the lowest. 
She ministered to all, and was loved by all. These 
many years she has been within the vail. I shall 
know her when we meet, and the rest of the city 
of God will be completer when once more I feel 
the clasp of her arms. 

Yes, I came into the Church when two days 
old, and the tie was never wholly broken. The 
relation of the baptized children of the Church 
to the Church and its Head is very sacred to 
every parent who knows and feels what is meant 
by the baptism of children. Man}' show that 
they neither know nor feel its solemn and bless- 
ed significance. There will be an awakening 
and a reform in the brighter day that is com- 
ing in Christendom. Then will be understood 
the fullness and sweetness of the meaning of the 
Master's words: "Suffer the little children to 
come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is 
the kingdom of heaven." What do the words 
mean? We may be sure that they do not mean 



An Early Start, 



ii 



that our children are farther from God and lower 
in privilege in the New Testament Church than 
under the old dispensation. We maybe sure that 
they do not mean that our children must of neces- 
sity go into sin and be stained and maimed and 
stunted in their spiritual development by it. We 
may be sure that they do not mean that they are 
to be turned loose in the world and branded by 
the devil, afterwards to be lassoed and tamed if 
possible by special effort. No, no ! The Master's 
words must mean at least this much: that the 
baptized children of the Church belong to him; 
they are initially inducted into his kingdom; they 
have the promise of prevenient grace and guidance 
up to the line of moral accountability. Then 
what? Just this: they may and ought to tide right 
over by faith into the conscious salvation of the 
gospel. Faith is choice — the choice of the parent 
at first, the choice of the child when choice for it 
is possible. My mother felt the answer to her 
prayer of faith at my baptism: I feel it now. 

The millennium cannot come until the Church 
shall have assumed its proper relation to the chil- 
dren of the Church. If it were to come, it could 
not stay with a Church that allows a wall of ice to 
shut off her children from her communion. Ques- 
tion: May not the lapse into sin of so many chil- 
dren in the families of ministers of the gospel and 
other good people be owing to their error at this 
point? The religious natures of their children 
bud into initial life normally at an early age, and 
are killed by the frosts of neglect and delay. They 
may not have a second budding time: if they do, 
will not the growth be a stunted growth? The 
promise is to you and your children in the present 
tense for all. Let him and her that readeth un- 
derstand. 



MY FIRST SCHOOLING. 



MY FIRST SCHOOLING. 



THE image of my first school-teacher rises 
before me as I begin this chapter — that of 
a sweet-faced, sweet-voiced, hoi)' woman, 
who opened the daily sessions with a 
prayer that made us feel that she was 
talking with God and that he was there. The dis- 
cipline of her school was strict, but it was the 
strictness of a constraining and pervading personal 
influence rather than a code of rules or fear of 
punishment. A boy about my own age one day 
was detected in a falsehood, and was told to stand 
in a corner and think of his sin against God. All 
the corporal punishment I ever felt or witnessed 
in all my life never impressed me with the guilt and 
shame of falsehood as did that object lesson. She 
somehow made us feel that all sin was sacrilegious 
as well as mean. We all loved her. The image 
of Rebecca Field — that was her name — keeps its 
place in my heart undimmed. She was what 
coarse people call an old maid — one of those 
sw r eet-souled and finely-tuned women who, mak- 
ing no homes of their own, bless every home they 
touch; one of those Christlike spirits that, with a 
self-abnegation incomprehensible to lower natures, 
live for others, sweetening this dull, sordid world 
and ripening for that other world beyond where, 
with that other Mary whom Jesus loved and a blessed 
company of such elect souls, they will find their re- 
ward and fit companionship. That long sentence 
grew upon me, but its length will be excused when 
the reader is told that this holy woman, mv first 
teacher, gave me a love for all such that I can 
never lose. 

(15) 



1 6 Sunset Views, 

My next teacher was a man — a man to be re- 
membered. He was a good man, but severe, with 
notions of school government and discipline quite 
in contrast with those held by my first teacher. 
He did not spoil his pupils by sparing the rod. He 
whipped them with apparent enjoyment and ex- 
traordinary energy and frequency. Those gum 
and hickory switches, four or five in number, 
were placed above his desk, not for ornament, but 
for use. I heard him say more than once that I 
was his favorite scholar: he exhibited his favorit- 
ism by whipping me more than the others. Under 
the circumstances I was not very proud of the 
distinction. Fear and force ruled his school. 
The boys hated and feared him, and loved to an- 
noy him as much as he seemed to enjoy flogging 
them. It was a hard time for both teacher and 
pupils. Once during the term we " turned him 
out" for a holiday, and it was done by main force: 
a big boy asked for a holiday, and was refused: 
and then the irate pedagogue was thrown to the 
floor and held down until he agreed to the demand. 
We went away triumphant and rejoicing. But 
when we came back after the holiday was over, 
he "got even 7 ' with us, and more. Those gum 
and hickory switches made up for lost time. It is 
needless to say that to me the memory of the teach- 
er that prayed and ruled by love is sweeter than that 
of the one who whipped and ruled by fear. 

M} r third teacher was a quaint old Irish-Ameri- 
can, a fine scholar, a gentleman of the old school, 
whose passion was mathematics and whose special 
abhorrence was faulty syntax. He was not averse 
to the use of the rod in dealing with boys, but he 
never gave a blow to a girl: the chivalry of his 
race on its upper side was in his blood and breed- 
ing. An Irishman's best, let me again say, is as 



My First Schooling, 



17 



good as the best to be found anywhere on earth. 
He would show a partiality toward the girls that 
made the boys angry sometimes. At this distance 
this trait lends a grace to his memory. His weak- 
ness leaned in the direction of a chivalrous senti- 
ment that has made half of the poetry of the 
world and a large part of its blessedness. It is a 
pleasant fact to record that my old Irish-American 
schoolmaster became a Christian man. He was 
converted at a Methodist camp meeting, and was 
quaintly demonstrative on the occasion. On the 
camp ground he had an enemy, a man named 
Kemp. Glowing with his first love as a Christian 
he sought his enemy, and finding him in the midst 
of a group of men, he grasped his hand, saying 
impulsively: "Kemp, give me your hand — I feel 
humble enough to shake hands with a dog ! " The 
old man kept the faith unto the end of his life. 

My next and last teacher was a small man, 
quick of motion and speech, with a big head cov- 
ered with black bushy hair, spotless in his apparel, 
jealous of his dignity, with a passion for work and 
genuine good will toward all his pupils. He was 
what many would call a fussy man, ready to take 
sides in all personal quarrels, a hot partisan in 
politics, and perpetually entangled in mild love 
scrapes. But he had the pedagogical gift beyond 
question, and was at bottom a true man. There 
was a streak of romance in his life, but the pathos 
of grief and death crowd it out of this record. 

I had other schooling all along, of course— the 
schooling of my environment, which was mixed 
and peculiar. Our home was a frequent stopping 
place for the Methodist preachers. When farthest 
from religion in his daily life, my father never lost 
his respect and regard for the Methodist Church 
and its ministry. Her Church life was for my 
2 



1 8 Sunset Views. 

mother the golden thread that ran through all the 
tangled web of her life. So in my boyhood I 
heard (as a boy hears) the sermons of such pulpit 
giants as Peter Doub, James Reid, and William 
Anderson; the tremendous exhortations of Father 
Dye; the seraphic songs of Jehu Hank. I was 
saturated with the spirit of that time of mighty revi- 
vals, polemical controversy, and sharp hand-to-hand 
lighting with the world, theflesh, and the devil. And 
the fighting was indeed sharp. The whisky distill- 
ery, the cross-road doggery, the cockfight, the horse 
race, the card table, were all around. I saw and 
heard much that I would be glad to forget forever. 
It was largely a duel between the Methodist Church 
and the whisky devil during this period. When 
in 1866 my father, then an old man, told me that 
he went alone once every day to prav in the little 
Methodist chapel in sight of his home, and that 
he had found peace with God, and was waiting for 
the call to go up to meet my mother. I thanked 
God for the Methodist Church that has made the 
desert places of America blossom and its wilder- 
nesses to rejoice. 

The life and death of my brother William, two 
years older than myself, was a graciously educative 
influence of my boyhood. He was frail in his 
physical constitution from the start, and there was 
something about him that seemed to indicate that 
he was destined for another and higher sphere than 
earth. He was never known to utter an evil word, 
or to show a wrong temper, or to strike an angry 
blow. There was a spiritual beauty about him that 
awed and attracted both the old and the young. He 
died in his teens, lving in our mother's arms, his 
face shining rapturously as he said with upward 
look, ' 'Lift me higher! " That death and the life 
that went before it were part of my schooling. 



A SAD NIGHT RIDE. 



A SAD NIGHT RIDE. 



I WAS a sad-hearted boy that winter day when 
I left home to go out into the wide world alone. 
My mother's hot tears fell on my face as she 
gave me a parting kiss. I feel it all as I write 
these lines to-day, more than fifty years after- 
wards. I was under fourteen years old. The 
family fortunes had sunk to a point where it be- 
came imperative that I should become self-support- 
ing. From that day to this I have fought this bat- 
tle. The record of the struggle would be a record 
of my gropings in the dark and sinnings in the 
light on the one side, and of the patience and 
mercy of my God on the other. (That last sen- 
tence might be taken as an epitome of my whole 
life.) Blessed be His name! 

My destination was Lynchburg, Virginia. It 
was twelve miles to Danville, where ended the first 
stage of my journey. I felt like one in a dream 
as the four-horse stage wheeled me along. The 
winter sky looked cold, and there was a heaviness 
about my heart and a lump in my throat. I had 
no appetite for the hot supper set before me at 
Williams's Tavern. When a boy in his early teens 
loses his appetite, there is something serious in the 
case. At two o'clock in the morning I was roused 
and told that the stagecoach was waiting for me. 
That ride ! It seemed a long, long time from two 
o'clock to daybreak. The weather was very cold, 
the very stars glittering coldly in the sky, the 
horses' hoofs making lively time on the frozen 
roadbed. The jolting of the stagecoach and the 
sadness of my heart kept me wide awake dur- 



22 



Sunset Views, 



ing the long hours. The sense of loneliness was 
then first felt, not for the last time. There are 
souls that feel it all their lives — orphaned at the 
the start, isolated all along. To such heaven will 
be sweeter, if possible, than to all others — the 
heaven where the family of God shall meet and 
mingle in fellowship unrestrained, with love un- 
mixed and unending. Blessed are the homesick 
who shall reach that home ! I was too heartsick 
to realize how cold it was. When at sunrise 
we drove up to the tavern at Pittsylvania Court- 
house, I was so nearly frozen that I had to 
be lifted out of the stagecoach, taken into the 
house, and set by the big log fire to thaw. The 
landlady gave me a kindly look, and spoke kindly 
words that touched my boy-heart. But I thought of 
the home I had left on the other side of Dan River, 
and again there was a lump in my throat. It all 
comes back — that long cold night ride, the all-day 
ride that followed, and the heartache that never 
left me for a moment. Over the hills of Pittsyl- 
vania and Campbell counties, crossing Staunton 
River, which then looked big to my boyish eyes, 
the wintry wind whistling through the forest trees, 
the smoke curling upward from mansions or cabins 
in the clearings, the Blue Ridge outlined north- 
ward in the sky that looked so far away and so 
cold — it all comes back with a rush upon my memo- 
ry, my first day alone in the world. There was a 
sort of semi-orphanage in my consciousness that 
day that has given me sympathy for orphanage all 
my life. And I do not wonder that the Book that 
tells us what is in God's heart toward his creatures 
says so much about the children that are mother- 
less and homeless. The heavenly Father may not 
be seen by the natural eye in the order of the nat- 
ural world, but the throb of his heart is felt in the 



A Sad Night Ride. 



23 



Word that tells us what he is and how he feels. 
The heavenly Father N — that is w T hat he calls him- 
self. Our Father, who art in heaven, thy king- 
dom come in our hearts, in our lives, in our world, 
is the prayer that rises from my soul in penning 
the closing words of this short chapter! Amen. 



HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD. 



HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD. 



IT may be worth while for me to pause in this 
straggling narration, and tell how it was that 
Methodism held its grasp upon me. The so- 
lution seems to be very simple: Methodism 
went everywhere that I went. There was al- 
ways within my hearing a Methodist voice that 
would expose the sophistries of infidelity, and I 
was never beyond the sweep of a revival wave that 
bore me back toward my mother's Church. No 
matter how 7 high might rise the tides of worldli- 
ness, passion, or unbelief, the tides of spiritual life 
in Methodism rose higher still. The Methodist 
idea then seemed to be that the mission of the 
Church was to save sinners in a sense more ex- 
plicit than is now understood by many. The great 
revival out of which Methodism was born was still 
sweeping over the land. Through Methodism and 
other evangelical agencies God was commanding 
all men everywhere to repent. The kingdom of 
heaven was at hand in a sense that was special. 
To save sinners, not to build up the Church, was 
the Methodistic idea. The continent shook be- 
neath its tread. This is the gospel that was 
needed. The Church was built up, of course, 
wherever souls were born of God into new life 
under her ministry. There never was seen any- 
where else such rapid growth in Church member- 
ship as there was in Methodism in the flush time 
of its revival power. Has a change come over it? 
Is a change desirable? Is a change to be ex- 
pected? No! Let us have no radical change in 
our convictions as to what are the true functions 

(27) 



28 



Sunset Views, 



of the Christian Church. Let us have no radical 
change of opinion or practice as to what is the 
special mission of Methodism. Methodism is not 
a sacerdotalism. When it becomes thus mummi- 
fied, it will be ready for its shroud of formalism 
and for burial. It is Christianity in earnest — in the 
present tense. (Dr. Chalmers would not object to 
the added clause, even if it does seem tautologous. ) 
Methodists when saved become soul-savers in 
some form of Christian service. All are to be at 
it, and always at it, as long as they live on earth. 
To build up the Church in the true New Testa- 
ment sense of the word is not only to polish its 
living stones, but to work in new material. The 
saints fall on sleep every generation, and others 
must take their places in the militant Church. 
The baptized children of the Church come to the 
point when they should ratify the baptismal cove- 
nant made by their parents, and make covenanted 
blessings theirs by choice. Shall we wait for a re- 
vival to take them into full fellowship ? Not neces- 
sarily. But the right sort of a revival, at the right 
time, raises a gracious tide of spiritual power that 
sweeps them over the bar into the port— the bar 
of worldliness, or doubt, or indecision. Thus a 
large percentage of our membership came into the 
Church; how large, the reader may be astonished 
to learn if he will make inquiry. And for back- 
sliders, the periodical revival is the reopening of 
the gates for their return to the fold they have 
left. 

This is the true history of the revival in Metho- 
dism, and it is largely the same in other evangeli- 
cal bodies. It is not a question of theory, but of 
facts- -facts all pointing to the same conclusion, 
namely, that this is the method owned and blessed 
by the Holy Spirit. Its development among us 



How Methodism Keft Its Hold. 29 



was providential beyond question: its maintenance 
is demanded by every consideration affecting the 
salvation of men and the glory of God. All that 
can be truly said as to false methods and false re- 
vivalists may be assented to freely without any dis- 
count upon the value of genuine revival work. Sa- 
tan never fails to counterfeit as far as he can any 
good work he cannot stop. The lying wonders of 
Simon Magus counterfeited the gracious miracles 
of the true disciples of our Lord. This short chap- 
ter, which came in of itself, so to speak, as a re- 
flection on a personal statement, may end here with 
this remark: The time may come when Methodist 
and other evangelical bodies can afford to dispense 
with revivals, truly so called; but the child is not 
born who will live to see that time. 



TAKING SHAPE. 



TAKING SHAPE. 



MY life in Lynchburg began at the age when 
a boy grows fastest and is most impress- 
ible. He takes shape in body and soul 
between his first teens and early man- 
hood. I learned to set type in the print- 
ing office of the Lynchburg Republican, and ac- 
quired a taste for journalism that has never left 
me. That part of my schooling, in the order of 
divine providence, was destined to have a very pos- 
itive influence upon all my after life. That was a 
time of intense political feeling and sharp politi- 
cal debate. It was also a period during which re- 
ligious controversy ran high. Political discussion 
and denominational debates were carried on ear- 
nestly by a people who had strong convictions and 
much loquacity. The Whigs and Democrats, 
nearly balanced in numbers, contended for politi- 
cal supremacy. Virginia was always at the front 
in those days: every voter was also a propagan- 
dist, and every youth an incipient statesman, at 
least in his own estimation. My naturalization was 
rapid, though not without friction and tribulation. 
Lynchburg boys of that day were like all other 
boys of all other times and places. They were of 
the normal type, and loved to w T restle, box, swim, 
and shoot. Being a new boy, I had to run the 
gantlet — that is to say, to fight every boy of my 
own age and size, or back down when challenged. 
My blood and my home teaching did not incline 
me to nonresistance. In fact, I always had a rel- 
ish for fighting. It is certain that I had all the 
fighting I wanted. The names of Kirkwood Otey, 
3 (33) 



34 



Sunset Views. 



Paul Banks, Henry Orr, Walter Withers, Beall 
Blackford, Nick Floyd, and others, come to my 
mind — boys with whom I had battles that were 
drawn battles, none of us at any time getting 
enough drubbing to prevent renewal of the fight 
when occasion offered. Those Lynchburg boys 
were made of true metal. The strength of the 
hills was in their frames, the inspiration of a glori- 
ous history was in their souls, an heroic heredity 
was in their blood. They fought fairly, and never 
cherished malice, giving and taking hard knocks 
without flinching. In the 6 6 war between the states ' ' 
these Lynchburg boys made their mark. They 
marched with Stonewall Jackson through the Val- 
ley of Virginia, and followed Lee in his wonder- 
ful campaigns. Braver soldiers never wore uni- 
forms. 

The Christian religion will, in its final triumph, 
bring in the reign of universal peace. The time is 
coming when the nations shall learn war no more, 
when swords shall be turned into plowshares, and 
spears into pruning hooks. Of this I have no 
doubt. Not only does the word of God promise 
it, but it seems to me patent that if Christianity 
stopped short of this result it would be to that ex- 
tent a failure. In the happier age that is coming, 
war will be looked upon as a horrible feature of 
a darker period of the world's history, when the 
evolution of God's purpose to give to the world 
knowledge, truth, freedom, and peace through the 
gospel of Jesus Christ was in its earlier and incom- 
plete stages. The noncombatant theories were 
not taught me in my boyhood, and the world had 
not then reached the promised time of peace. Cow- 
ardice was held to be a sin and a shame among 
men and boys everywhere. The whole American 
nation was possessed of this martial spirit, and it 



Taking Shajye. 



35 



has led us to make presidents of our successful 
generals, from Washington to Taylor and Grant. 
I fought my way to peace among the Lynchburg 
boys. 

I am a noncombatant now in theory, as it 
seems to me all New Testament Christians ought 
to be. But it would perhaps be as awkward for a 
nation in this year of our Lord to announce and 
act upon noncombatant principles as it would 
have been for a Lynchburg youth among his com- 
panions a half century ago. Combativeness has 
hitherto been invariably a constituent element of 
human nature. It is in the blood, instincts, and 
history of our race. Hero worship has been the 
universal religion. What is to become of the 
combativeness after the era of universal peace has 
dawned ? Will it disappear ? Or, will the love of 
conflict find legitimate exercise in other and high- 
er fields of activity ? Progress is the law under 
which the world moves in its pathway through the 
ages — progress by conquest, progress by over- 
coming obstacles and beating down opposing 
forces of whatever kind. To him that overcom- 
eth is given the promise to eat of the tree of life, 
and of the hidden manna; and to him will be 
given the white stone in which the New Name is 
written which is known only to its recipient; and 
to him will be given power over the nations. But 
the weapons of this warfare are not carnal. The 
victory that overcometh the world is the victory of 
faith. What does that mean to the reader? The 
true answer would reveal his status and trend. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 



FORMATIVE influences! This heading 
for this chapter presents a riddle. Who 
can know or analyze the agencies or influ- 
ences which have made him what he is? 
During the years of my stay in Lynchburg 
I was employed first in the newspaper office, and 
afterwards in a bookstore, and last of all as a post- 
office clerk. I read everything I could lay my 
hands on — mostly the newspapers of the day. The 
party press of both sides engaged my youthful 
mind, and I became an expert in partisan phrases 
and catchwords, if not an adept in constitutional 
law and political legislation. I adopted opinions at 
this time that I still retain, and became subject to 
prejudices and partialities that will be buried only 
in my grave. In the selection of my reading I had 
no guide save my own whim or choice or the limi- 
tations of' my purse. If it could be so, I would 
be glad even at this late day to blot from my mind 
the memory of some things I read during this pe- 
riod of my life: bad books that were read out of 
mere curiosity and thrown aside with disgust. 
Curiosity! How many young persons start on 
the paths that lead to hell to gratify curiosity! 
The first vicious book, the first step in any of the 
ways that take hold on hell, is thus taken by so 
many that follow in the footsteps of the first trans- 
gressor in this world's tragic history. 

In the choice of my companions I exercised the 
same freedom, having no guide save my own pref- 
erence or the relationships naturally springing out 
of my environment. If any reader of these pages 

(39) 



4 o 



Sunset Views. 



doubts that man is a fallen being, and that the trail 
of the serpent of sin is all over this earth, he has 
had a different experience from mine, or he must 
draw a different conclusion from the same facts. 
The vileness of what many youths call 4 4 fun" ex- 
ceeds even its idiocy. Respect for my mother, 
and a voice in the inner soul that was never si- 
lenced, made me turn away from profanity or ob- 
scenity if I could, or to hear it with disgust if I 
could not shut it out. But it was no more possi- 
ble for a boy left to himself to escape contact with 
foulness of speech than with foulness of the print- 
ed page. Thus it came to pass that I heard as 
well as read much that it is painful to remember — 
the pain being mixed with gratitude to God for 
the repulsion that was always felt at its polluting 
touch. Let me say it just here: Never for one 
moment of my life have I committed any sin, or 
come into contact with sin in any of its grosser 
forms, without feeling such a repulsion for it as to 
prove to me that the Holy Spirit has never left me 
nor ceased to move upon my soul since I crossed 
the line of moral accountability. Reading over 
that last sentence, and knowing it to be the affirma- 
tion of a fact, my heart is lifted in silent gratitude 
to God as I write these words. I would close 
this paragraph with a word of advice to any young 
person who may read what I say: Be simple con- 
cerning evil. Do not start to hell from curiosity. 
Ignorance on these lines is pleasing to God and 
honorable to yourself. The flippant assumption by 
young people of a knowledge of the world on its 
dark under side is at once a weakness and a wick- 
edness — a weakness to be ashamed of, a wicked- 
ness to repent of. Avoid alike the idiocy of such 
a pretension and the vileness of such an experi- 
ence, O youthful reader, whoever you may be. 



Formative Influences. 



4 1 



Two men's names drop from my pen point here 
while I am speaking of the formative influences of 
my youth. They were both great and good men, 
though of different types. The one was Doctor 
William K. Smith, of the Virginia Conference of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. To his 
own generation he was well known — a giant in de- 
bate, one of the foremost leaders of his side in the 
struggle that ended in the division of the Church 
in 1844. He was indeed a grand man. Lion-like 
in port, with a voice to match, in the arena he 
moved as a conqueror. There was a limp in his 
gait from a crippled limb, but there w T as none in 
his logic. In debate, when sure of his premises, 
he was irresistible. His awakening sermons were 
terrible. Fortified by well-chosen Scripture texts, 
with exegesis and deduction clear and strong, he 
showed the sinner who listened to him that he 
was on an inclined plane sliding down hellward, 
and that repentance or ruin was to be chosen then 
and there. He was as simple as a child, knowing 
no concealments as he knew no fear. He believed 
in Arminian (or Wesleyan) theology and in state- 
rights politics. He trained with John Wesley's 
followers in the Church and with John C. Calhoun's 
followers in the State. His call to preach must 
have been very clear and strong: nothing short of 
this could have kept him out of party politics. In 
either house of Congress he would have been con- 
spicuous in the eyes of the nation. Whether he 
was ever tempted to turn aside in this direction, I 
know not. The devil has a way of taking such 
men up into a high mountain — the mountain of 
imagination — and showing and promising to them 
the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. 
Such as have listened and yielded have found that 
he is a liar from the beginning. The preacher- 



4 2 



Sunset Views. 



politician, as a rule, is a failure for both worlds. 
Tragedies along this line have come under my ob- 
servation that are sad enough, if it were possible, 
to excite the pity of the arch deceiver himself. 
What Doctor Smith saw in me that attracted his 
notice and elicited his good will, I cannot tell; but 
it was a fortunate circumstance for me that it was 
so. When I was a clerk in the Lynchburg post 
office, he would come inside and talk with me for 
hours at a time. Rather, he would talk to me. He 
loved a good listener, such as I must have been 
then. Those monologues would be good reading 
now for persons who think. The only record of 
them extant is in the memory of the boy who heard 
them with wonder and delight. Forgetting that he 
had only a single hearer — and he only an inquisi- 
tive youth — the great man would unfold great 
schemes of thought, and argue and illustrate them 
with a power that was tremendous, and an enthu- 
siasm that was charmingly contagious. The friend- 
ship of such a man was to me a blessing and an in- 
spiration. At that time I was young, and impress- 
ible in many ways. My veneration for Doctor 
Smith was tinged with awe because of a story that 
his parsonage was 6 'haunted" at night. The 
story was, that sound of the rocking of an invis- 
ible cradle by invisible hands went on night after 
night during the still hours when the family w^ere 
abed and the world asleep. This was never de- 
nied nor explained. The supernatural touch, real 
or fancied, all of us respond to in our earlier years. 
It answers to something that is in us all — a belief 
in a world unseen. 

The other personality that comes in here is that 
of Doctor Robert B. Thomson, of the Methodist 
Protestant Church. His benignant presence seems 
almost to pervade the room as I write his name. 



Formative Influences. 



43 



He was a man of medium size, who looked larger 
than he was under the afflatus that gave him the 
pulpit transfiguration. His dark eyes glowed with 
the fires of thought. About him there was the in- 
definable magnetism that drew the hearts of the 
people, old and young, to him. He was eloquent 
in the truest and highest sense of the word. He 
had the clairvoyance that springs from the sympa- 
thy that flows out of a great heart filled with the 
love of souls. Doctor Thomson seemed to know 
my needs and my perils, and gave me touches that 
have influenced me to this hour. The worth of 
such a man to a community cannot be measured 
this side of the final judgment. For him there is 
in my heart an affection that is almost filial in its 
nature. 

During all this time I lived in an atmosphere 
sweetened by the lives of holy women whom I met 
in the family circle and in the places of religious 
worship. Their faces shone in holy beauty, and 
their songs and prayers and good works made 
what is divinest in human character audible, visi- 
ble, and tangible. Four of these — Mrs. Early. 
Mrs. Otey. Airs. Saunders, and Mrs. Daniel — 
made a quartette so Christlike that unbelief was 
abashed in their presence, and all that was holy 
and beneficent bloomed within the spheres of their 
gentle ministries. 

One of the formative influences of this period of 
my life is mentioned last of all, though not the least 
potent. From time to time the post would bring 
me a letter from my mother, breathing mother-love 
and telling me what was in her hope and prayers 
for me. Tear-stains were on the sheets, and my 
own eves grew misty as I read them. Her love 
held me fast, and inspiration was in the thought 
that well-doing on my part would give her joy. 



44 



Sunset Views. 



Her prayer touched God, and God touched me. 
My blessed mother! She trod the paths of pain 
and toil and heartache and self-sacrifice through 
all her life. I was too blind to see what I owed to 
her while she was yet living her life of service 
here on earth. Like too many others, the mother- 
love with its self-abnegation and self-devotion— 
the self-abnegation that denies nothing that love 
demands, and the self-devotion that gives all that 
love can give — I took as a matter of course. I now 
see more clearly and feel more deeply what I owe 
to my mother. May I here express the hope that 
some day 3 somewhere. I may meet her and tell her 
the love and gratitude that are in my heart? Some 
day. somewhere? 



FOUR OLD-TIME REVIVALISTS. 



FOUR OLD-TIME REVIVALISTS. 



F, IRST in my memory is George W. Dye — 
, Father Dye he was called by the people — 
who in family prayer at my father's house 
seemed to talk with God as friend talks to 
friend, and who at the old Sharon camp 
ground on a Sunday morning, as it seemed to my 
boyish mind, turned loose a spiritual cyclone upon 
the awe-stricken multitude. The revivals he con- 
ducted were of such a character that no one w r ho 
believed at all in a supernatural religion could 
doubt that they were the work of God. Gam- 
blers, debauchees, profane swearers, and even 
drunkards, were powerfully converted — to use a 
phrase that has been current among the people 
called Methodists. The expression is just right: 
in no other way could they have been converted 
at all. Sin is a powerful enslaver: Satan is a 
strong tyrant, holding the castle of the human 
soul. The power that dislodges him must be still 
stronger. The gospel of Christ is the power of 
God unto salvation. Power! Those old circuit 
riders had it. All substitutes for it are worthless. 
The more machinery you have without power, the 
more worthless is any organization. Father Dye 
types a class not yet extinct. 

Another one that comes to mind was George 
W. Childs — the most ghostly-looking man I ever 
saw. His frame was tall and thin, his step noise- 
less, his face as pale as death, and he had a rapt, 
far-away look that made him seem to be not of the 
earth earthy, as are common men. It was easy to 
believe that there is a great spirit-world after see- 

(47) 



4 8 



Sunset Views. 



ing this unworldly old circuit rider. The strange 
power that attended his preaching could be ac- 
counted for in no other way. It was said of him 
that he had lain in a trance three days and nights, 
that he was never known to laugh afterwards, and 
that he was never heard to speak of it. Whether 
or not like Paul he saw things not lawful to be ut- 
tered — or thought he saw them — we cannot say. 
But that then and there he had an experience of 
some sort, that thenceforward made him a changed 
man, is beyond doubt. Boy as I was, I was strange- 
ly thrilled and awed in the presence of this man of 
God — for such he was. His very looks refuted 
materialism. 

The influence of William M. Crumley (men- 
tioned elsewhere in these pages) has never left 
me since I last saw him in 1866. In the pulpit he 
too had that strange power that no one was ever 
able to analyze or explain. He was not eloquent 
in any ordinary sense of the w r ord. His sermons 
were the most informal talks, in a subdued con- 
versational tone ; and yet it was no unusual occur- 
rence for the crowded congregations that attended 
his ministry to be wrought up to the point of im- 
mediate surrender to Christ. In his own way he 
made a "still hunt" among his parishioners that 
found them all. No member of his flock was left 
unfed. He was a revivalist everywhere — he was 
himself a revival incarnated. I never heard him 
speak in a loud voice. I never heard him make 
an appeal to the emotions that was not also an ap- 
peal to the conscience. That I had even a short 
season of pastoral training with such a man is a 
fact for which I have never ceased to be grateful. 
He was a man of God : that solves the secret of his 
success. 

A very different sort of man was Leonidas Ros- 



Four Old-time Revivalists, 



49 



ser, but he too was a revivalist whose power was the 
wonder of his brethren. He was by no means a 
quiet man anywhere or any time when awake. It 
is likely that even his dreams had a dramatic and 
pictorial quality. He was criticised, smiled at, 
and followed up and listened to by multitudes. 
Many were converted under his ministry. If 
there could be such a being as a sanctified dandy, 
he was one. The fit of his clothes, the pose of his 
body, the seemingly self-conscious look that never 
left him for a moment, the dramatic recital of in- 
cidents in which he himself was an actor, could 
not fail to elicit remark, especially in ministerial 
circles. (Note: Ministers in their proneness to 
criticise one another are not worse than other 
men.) But what was the secret of Rosser's 
power? It was the genuine earnestness of the 
man. He knew that the gospel he preached was 
the power of God unto salvation. His ineradica- 
ble Rosserisms were on the surface : deeper with- 
in his soul was the burning love for souls that 
somehow melts the hearts of the hardest sinners. 
He had a faith so mighty that all sorts of peo- 
ple, saints and sinners alike, caught its contagion. 
The individuality of the man was not lost, but the 
excellency of the power was of God. The quali- 
ty of his ministry was attested by its fruits. He 
was a man of God, not without human infirmity — 
where is the man who is not? — whose natural gifts 
as a speaker and charms of personality were sup- 
plemented by that one element that differentiates 
human eloquence from apostolic power. 

Here is another revivalist, presenting a contrast 
to Rosser in every particular save one : John Forbes, 
a local preacher, who during many years was as 
a flame of fire over the Dan River region in Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina. He was a man of the 
4 



5o 



Sunset Views. 



people; poor as to this world's goods; without 
book learning, except that found in the one Book 
of books ; living in a cabin that could not be called 
a cottage without a verbal strain; a tall, gangling, 
ungainly, genial, free-and-easy sort of rural apostle. 
He was as guileless as a child, and feared not the face 
of man. The common people heard him gladly, 
while the more cultured listened to him with won- 
der. His sermons presented two points: the ter- 
rors of the law, and the freeness and fullness of 
gospel grace. "The wages of sin is death, but 
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ 
our Lord" — that was his message; he had no 
other. It was God's own message, and it had 
God's own attestation. According to the prom- 
ise, it killed and made alive. Critics were dis- 
armed, scoffers were silenced, quibblers were con- 
founded, cavilers were convinced. If it was not 
the power of God, what was it that wrought so 
mightily by the ministry of this large-boned, 
large-featured, unlearned, simple-hearted, farmer- 
preacher? Because of his plainness of speech on 
one occasion some lewd fellows of the baser sort 
threatened to give him a beating if he ever dared 
to hold another meeting in their neighborhood. 
Their threat did not frighten Forbes, who soon af- 
terwards began a special protracted service among 
them. The threat of the offended parties had been 
given wide publicity, and a vast congregation as- 
sembled, many of them drawn by the expectation 
of a row. The old preacher opened the service 
with the usual exercises, and then announced a 
text embodying his one pulpit topic — the certainty 
that unrepented sin would be punished, and that 
God was ready to bless and save all who would 
truly repent of their sins. Toward the close of 
the sermon, in describing the security of the faith- 



Four Old-time Revivalists. 



ful and their final coronation, he " got happy,' 7 as 
the plain country people expressed it — that is to 
say, his soul was flooded with the joy of the Holy 
Ghost. " Where are those fellows who came here 
to-day to whip me? 99 he asked. " Why, He would 
not let a thousand such harm me. Where are 
they?" he repeated; and as he spoke, with his eyes 
shut and his rugged face shining, he left the preach- 
ing stand and made his way up and down the 
aisles, exhorting as he moved. "My God," he 
exclaimed, "wouldn't let fifty thousand sinners 
whip me to-day ! — but boys," he continued with a 
sudden overflow of tenderness, "he is able to for- 
give and save you all this day," placing his hand 
upon the head of one of the opposing party as he 
spoke. The effect was indescribable. A mighty 
wave of feeling swept over the entire assembly 
amid songs and shoutings on the part of be- 
lievers, with tears and sobbings among the un- 
converted. The preacher got no whipping that 
day. The meeting was kept up. Among its con- 
verts were most of the hostile gang who had come 
to whip the preacher. 

When the old man died he did not own enough 
of this world's goods to buy a burial lot, but his 
name is as ointment poured forth in all that Dan 
River region, where on both sides of the state line 
so many of the holy dead, whose images rise be- 
fore my mental vision as I write, are sleeping in 
Jesus, awaiting the morning of the resurrection. 

" The treasure is in earthen vessels, that the ex- 
cellency of the power might be seen to be of God ? 
and not of men." 



A UNIQUE PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE. 



A UNIQUE PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE. 



THAT was a curious sort of school that I 
taught. The teacher, his methods, and his 
classes were all unique. I look back upon 
this episode in my life with amused sur- 
prise — if that is a good phrase with the 
right meaning. My father, animated by patriot- 
ism and zeal for the war party to which he be- 
longed, had gone as a soldier to the Mexican war, 
in which he did his duty, was crippled for life, 
came back alive, and drew a pension from the 
government with patriotic punctuality to the end of 
his life. During his absence I lived at home with 
my mother. The neighbors, who always over- 
rated my learning, requested me to open a school 
for their children, and I did so. I had about sixty 
pupils, ranging from the alphabet up as high as I 
could go. Classification was after a system — no, 
a method — of my own: system was not in it 
Some of the older pupils had formerly been my 
schoolmates; and if they did not know more than 
I did, it must surely have been their own fault. 
We all did pretty much as we pleased, and had a 
good time. The government of the school was 
mild, but mixed. The use of the rod was then 
still in fashion, but I did not use it often. The 
switches that were kept in sight behind my desk 
were placed there mainly to satisfy the expectation 
of my patrons, and for moral effect. One bow- 
legged boy — still living at this writing — at the end 
of six months had failed to master the alphabet 
under my instruction. There were other pupils 
who knew more than their teacher, especially in 



56 



Sunset Views. 



mathematics, in which he was never strong: 
these were kept busy in other studies in which 
he was more advanced. The good will of all con- 
cerned supplemented my shortcomings. 

Some of my old pupils are still living. When now 
and then I meet with one of them, the greeting on both 
sides is hearty. Few of them are left. When we meet 
in the spirit-world, there will be a look of inquisi- 
tiveness in our eyes: the inquiry will then come 
up, What did we do for each other back there at 
that old-time school in those old days? Not much 
was done, but something. My pupils got the best 
that was in me then: and the fact that I was their 
teacher and exemplar made my best better than it 
would otherwise have been. That is the way God 
educates us. Tests come to us that reveal to us 
our ignorance and weakness. Responsibility comes 
to us to steady and strengthen us. If you would 
teach a boy to swim, throw him into deep water. 
The youth who is petted and praised and coddled 
at home until he thinks it a great feat to rise and 
dress himself for breakfast, and believes that the 
chief functions of young manhood are to excite the 
admiration of one sex and the envy of another, 
thrown on his own resources develops a latent man- 
hood that astonishes himself and all who know him. 
Necessity [is the mother of manhood in action. 
Many men have saved their boys by losing their 
money. Just as many have ruined their boys by 
making money for them without training them for 
its use. At times I have been tempted to harbor 
in my soul a complaint that the fortunes of the 
familv to which I belonged went down in mv vouth 
to a point so low that I lost the advantages and op- 
portunities of other youths of mv own age . But per- 
haps oftener I have thanked God that by my pov- 
erty I escaped in some measure the perils that were 



A Un iqu e Pedagogical Ex-peri en ce. 57 



fatal to so many of them. It might have been that 
with a better mental training and a broader culture 
my life would have been larger and more fruitful 
of good. Or, it might have been that with the freer 
use of money, giving me access to indulgences out 
of my reach, with the lack of the spur of neces- 
sity to labor, I might have been one of that great 
army of young men of my country who were vic- 
tims of plenty — slaughtered by the vices that lie in 
wait for youth when it is idle and full of passion. 
Adversity is a good mother. Prosperity is a de- 
ceiver to many. 

The pupil that got most good out of that unique 
school was myself. My knowledge of some of the 
branches taught was increased, and the dignity 
of pedagogy, while it did not sit easy on a youth 
of my temperament, was a good thing for me 
to feel or to assume. The country schoolmas- 
ter has been described by Washington Irving and 
many others. There were some among the rural 
pedagogues who had scholarship, discipline, and 
moral force, but there were many others no better 
qualified for the work of education than I was. It 
was not time wasted after all. Those big barefoot 
boys and rosy, laughing country girls learned a 
little, and I learned a lesson that has been relearned 
by me many times since — namely, that all I did not 
know would make a very big book. The attempt 
to teach something that you think you know will 
give you a clear perception of the difference be- 
tween vague notions and true knowledge. If a 
term of teaching, long or short, could be included 
in every post-graduate course, there would be fewer 
failures by men who sport degrees. If there is any 
wisdom in this suggestion, and if any will act on 
it, let it be put to my credit. 

All this time the Methodist Church kept its arms 



58 



Sunset Views. 



around me, never withdrawing them for a moment. 
I heard the preaching of its preachers, I read the 
Christian Advocate and such miscellaneous Meth- 
odist reading as was then current in country dis- 
tricts. The ubiquitousness of the itinerant system 
was illustrated in the fact that in town or country, 
at home or on my travels, I have never for one day 
of my life been beyond the reach of the wide- 
reaching arms of that branch of the Church of 
Christ called Methodism. 



IN RICHMOND IN THE FORTIES. 



IN RICHMOND IN THE FORTIES. 



AT the close of the war with Mexico I went 
to Richmond, Virginia, and there abode 
for some time. Richmond was then noted 
for big Whig majorities, plucky Demo- 
crats, abundant Baptists of all shades of 
color, lively Methodists, fine-toned, middle-of-the- 
road Episcopalians, and Presbyterians who knew 
their catechisms and walked with God. The 
Whig and the Enquirer had for many years kept 
up a political duel of national notoriety and influ- 
ence. They furnished ammunition and watch- 
words for the partisans of Henry Clay and Andrew 
Jackson over all the land. There was a touch of 
chivalry in their fighting that was admirable, but 
it did not suffice to avert a tragedy that made good 
men of all parties mourn. The duello was even 
then an anachronism: grown men playing Ivanhoe 
after Ivanhoe and his like were dead and buried. 
By virtue of the ability of its party organs, the 
zeal of the local following, and the traditions of 
the past, Richmond was then virtually the political 
capital of the Union. The place was always in a 
political whirl. The women did not think of vot- 
ing and holding office, but every one of them who 
was not busy in Church work was in some way 
active in politics. Some were busy both for the 
Church and the party they loved. The Baptists 
had great swing with the negroes in Richmond at 
that time — and have not lost it yet. 

The African Baptist Church was a wonder to 
visitors from the North and from the old world 
who came to Richmond with the notion in their 

(61) 



62 



Sunset Views. 



heads that negro slavery was indeed the sum of 
all villainies, and that a slaveholding community 
was divided into only two parts — brutalized black 
slaves and cruel white owners. For the thou- 
sandth time I repeat here that I am glad that slav- 
ery is gone. It had to go. It had its day, and it 
had done its work. But let me say, what has 
been better said by wiser men, that the roots of 
all that is most hopeful in the present condition 
and prospects of the African race in these United 
States of America, and in all the world, including 
Africa, are to be found in the work that was done 
for them by the evangelical Churches in the South 
before the abolition of slavery. The Baptists and 
the Methodists led in this good work for the negro 
race. On the one side, immersion appealed to the 
love of the spectacular that is in them. Freedom 
of speech and in song appealed to a race that is full 
of eloquence and full of music, on the other. It 
has been a close race. That God may still bless 
both sides, and the final victor be made to do his 
very best to win, is a prayer in which all good Meth- 
odists and Baptists may join. The gospel of Christ 
will solve the negro problem, and all other prob- 
lems, in its own good time and in its own best way. 

The two preachers I heard of tenest in Richmond 
were Doctor David S. Doggett, Methodist, and 
Doctor T. V. Moore, Presbyterian. They were 
pulpit princes of the first rank. The descrip- 
tives that w r ould put Doggett before the reader 
would be: lucidity, elegance, vigor, unction — 
with emphasis on the last word. He drew and 
delighted, edified and held admiring crowds. His 
pulpit power made him a bishop and sustained 
him in the office. He was a light that burned and 
shined. In administrative genius and parlimen- 
tary tact he was not notable : in the pulpit he did 



In Richmond in the forties. 



63 



a work and made a name the Church will not let 
die. In an enumeration of the ten foremost preach- 
ers of American Methodism, the name of David 
S. Doggett could not be omitted. About Doc- 
tor Moore there was a charm that everybody felt 
but none could fully define. He was a tall, spare- 
built man, with a face that was pale and scholarly 
yet strong, with a resonance in his voice that 
pleased the ear while he reasoned of heavenly 
things and persuaded sinners to be reconciled to 
God. He read his sermons, but he read them in 
such a way as to make the hearer feel that he was 
listening to a confidential letter that the preacher 
had studied out and prayed over for his special 
benefit. He being dead, yet speaketh. And in the 
Richmond pulpit of that day stood Anthony Dib- 
rell — a tall, dark man, with the port of a prophet 
of the Lord, from whose sermons flashed the light- 
nings of Sinai and the glory of the cross. By ev- 
ery token, he was a man of God. There was also 
Doctor Leonidas Rosser, a mighty revivalist in his 
day — a man with the fervor and almost the elo- 
quence of a Whitefield. His hortatory power was 
extraordinary. He touched his word-pictures with 
the strongest colors: he was a master of the adjec- 
tive in the pulpit, if ever a man was. Great congre- 
gations were moved under his preaching, and whole 
communities were swept into the current of the 
revivals that attended his ministry. There was 
Doctor John E. Edwards, a declamatory whirlwind 
set to music — a man of small stature physically, 
firmly set, with a large, well-shaped head, blond- 
ish hair and skin, bright deep-blue eyes that 
flashed or melted as he spoke, and a voice as clear 
as a silver trumpet, and enunciation the most 
rapid of any man I ever heard. A distinguished 
American statesman, after hearing him preach, 



6 4 



Sunset Views. 



said : ' ' There are two great declaimers in the Unit- 
ed States — Rufus Choate and John E. Edwards — 
and the greater of the two is Edwards." Then 
there was Doctor Leroy M. Lee, who was the 
editor of the Richmond Christian Advocate^ then 
in the prime of his powers— a man who was ready 
for a tilt with any and all persons opposed to Ar- 
minian theology and Methodist polity. He was a 
man of convictions, and fed his readers and hear- 
ers on strong meat. It was a sturdy sort of Metho- 
dists that were reared in the families that took and 
read his paper. They could give a reason for the 
faith that was in them. In the pulpit he was in- 
clined to polemics and pugnacity, but could and 
did often preach a gospel that was tender and 
sweet and joyful — because the old editor had felt 
its tenderness, its sweetness, and its joy. Doctor 
Lee had in his physiognomy and in his character 
some of the features that belonged to that other 
Lee of Virginia who led in the field the armies of 
the Confederate States of America. These men 
were my tutors while I was still in a special sense 
in the formative period of my life. There are oth- 
ers whose names come to my mind, but I forbear. 
Their influence I thankfully acknowledge, and will 
never lose. 

Among the men I then met in Richmond was 
Edgar Allan Poe. I have a very vivid impression 
of him as he was the last time I saw him on a 
warm day in 1849. Clad in a spotless white linen 
suit, with a black velvet vest, and Panama hat, he 
was a man who would be notable in any company. 
I met him in the office of the Examiner ', the new 
Democratic newspaper which was making its 
mark in political journalism. It was ultra state 
rights in tone. John M. Daniel, its editor in 
chief, put into his editorials a caustic wit, a free- 



In Richmond in the Forties. 65 

dom in the use of personalities, and a brilliant 
rhetoric that won immediate success. Even the 
victims of his satire must have admired the keen- 
ness of his weapon and the skill of his thrust. There 
was a natural affinity between Poe and Daniel. Ar- 
rangements were made by which the scope of the 
Examiner was to be enlarged, and Poe to become 
its literary editor. Through the good offices of cer- 
tain parties well known in Richmond, Poe had 
taken a pledge of total abstinence from all intox- 
icating drinks. His sad face — it was one of the 
saddest faces I ever saw — seemed to brighten a lit- 
tle, as a new purpose and fresh hope sprang up in 
his heart. The Richmond people did a thing for him 
in away that had the old Virginia touch. He was 
invited to deliver a lecture ; the price of admission 
was fixed at five dollars a ticket, and three hun- 
dred persons were packed into the assembly rooms 
of the old Exchange Hotel at that price. The re- 
markable essay on " The Poetic Principle," found 
in his prose works, was composed for that occasion. 
I had the pleasure of hearing it read, and remember 
how forcibly I was struck with his tone and manner 
of delivery. The emphasis that he placed upon the 
dictum that the sole function of art was to minister 
to the love of the beautiful was especially notable. 
With the $1,500, the proceeds of the lecture, in 
hand, he started to New York for the purpose of 
settling up his affairs there, preparatory to enter- 
ing upon his work on the Examiner in Richmond. 
The tragic sequel is well known. Stopping in 
Baltimore en route ^ he attended a birthday party 
to which he had been invited. The fair hostess 
pledged him in a glass of wine; he sipped it de- 
spite his pledge; that sip was as a spark of fire to 
a powder magazine. A few days afterwards he lay 
dead in a hospital, where he died of mania a fiotu. 
5 



66 



Sunset Views. 



He had the sensitive organization of a man of gen- 
ius, and for him there was no middle ground be- 
tween total abstinence and drunkenness. The 
thought will press upon the mind: Who can esti- 
mate the loss to American literature by this un- 
timely death ? During the two tremendous decades 
from 1850 to 1870 what might he not have achieved 
on the lines of his special endowment? The sud- 
den quenching of such a light in such a way is a 
tragedy too deep for words. It was the work of 
the alcoholic devil — the devil that some young 
man who has genius, or thinks he has it, may be 
hugging to his bosom as he reads this page. God 
pity such folly ! Is it not time that this devil were 
chained in a Christian land? And should not ev- 
ery good man and woman help in doing it? I am 
not sorry that I took an humble part in the effort to 
save Edgar Allan Poe from the doom that overtook 
him. [A different and more favorable account has 
been given of Poe's death by a recent writer of 
respectability and evidently good spirit. The ac- 
count given by me is that which was current at the 
time.] 

Thus my schooling, such as it was, went on in 
Richmond — taking in religion, politics, literature, 
and whatever else was going on at the time. It 
was a taste of many dishes that had a keen relish 
for a youth who loved to read and was a student 
of human nature in his own way. I was pulled 
this way and that by opposing forces and conflict- 
ing ideas; but by the grace of God Methodism 
had the strongest hold on me, and kept it. 



AFLOAT. 



AFLOAT. 

THE word that makes the heading of this 
chapter describes the state of my mind and 
the manner of my life for some years just 
before and after I had reached twenty-one 
years of age. I was afloat. My inherited 
beliefs were under review. Every young man 
who thinks at all comes to this point. I read ev- 
erything that came within my reach. I talked with 
all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects. Among 
these subjects was Swedenborgianism. Having 
heard that John C. Calhoun was a disciple of that 
wonderful Swede, Emanuel Swedenborg — seer, 
madman, enthusiast, as you like — I felt a desire to 
know more of the man and his system. After 
reading his ' 'Arcana Celestia," the treatise on 
" Heaven and Hell," and his other works, I reached 
the conclusion that Swedenborg had as clear a 
view of some phases of religious truth as any other 
uninspired man ; that much learning and thinking 
made him mad; and that at length he mistook the 
dreams and vagaries of an overwrought mind for 
divine revelations. I am glad that I read Sweden- 
borg' s works, and feel assured that they left a de- 
posit with me of profitable suggestion that I will 
never lose. He was a visionary, a man to be classed 
with dreamers and theorizers rather than with the 
few elect spirits who have been the real religious lead- 
ers of the world. The first notable Swedenborgian 
I ever met was Richard K. Cralle, of Lynchburg, 
Virginia — a man whose brain was as massive and 
as angular as the unique dwelling built by him on 
one of the many hills of that hilly city on the spark- 

(69) 



7o 



Sunset Views. 



ling, swift-flowing James. This house was called 
" The Castle." It was built of stone, turreted, 
many-windowed, with corridors winding in and out, 
like a fortress of the middle ages, with a weird, 
ghostly effect that gave rise to a belief among the 
colored people and others that it was " haunted." 
I had heard Mr. Cralle read some of Mr. Cal- 
houn's letters to him, in which his religious be- 
liefs were expressed with the freedom of intimate 
friendship. Swedenborgianism is a queer com- 
pound — fascinating, elusive, disappointing. It has 
enough of scriptural and philosophical truth to whet 
the appetite of the reader, but lacks coherence, 
solidity, credibility, and symmetry. Swedenborgis 
not a lamp to light our path in the night, but an 
aurora borealis that flashes across the cold and 
darkened skies of speculative theology. So I 
think, having in my thought just now a number 
of Swedenborgian friends whose beautiful lives 
proved that they are walking in white with their 
Lord the Christ of God. 

The glamour of Universalism flashed upon my 
pathway during this time — a belief that always had 
an unsatisfying charm for me, but for which I can 
find no sufficient warrant in the teaching of the Bi- 
ble, nor in the analogies of nature, nor in the un- 
challenged facts of human history. In certain sen- 
timental moods all of us have Universalist fancies 
or impulses. But God in his word declares that 
the soul that sinneth must die, and his administra- 
tion throughout all departments of his government 
of the universe illustrates the awful truth — the aw- 
ful necessity, let us say. 

Unitarianism attracted my attention, through the 
writings of some of the gifted men who professed 
and expounded it; but it never disturbed my mind 
for one moment. The divinity of Jesus Christ can- 



Afloat. 



71 



not be questioned without impeaching his veracity. 
The divinity of Jesus Christ cannot be denied with- 
out denying the record given of him in the New Tes- 
tament Scriptures. Jesus Christ was God manifest 

in the flesh, or he was stop ! I will not write the 

words that imply the admission of doubt. He was 
very God as well as very man. Unitarianism may 
be toyed with by dilettanti, and by a class of reli- 
gionists whose hearts challenge what their pride 
of intellect would deny; but it never had, and 
can never have, any large following among peo- 
ple who believe the Bible and have the true heart- 
hunger of earnestness in the search for rest to 
their souls. 

Calvinism staggered me then, as it does now. 
I have known so many grand and good men and 
women who were Calvinists, or thought they were, 
that I feel like lifting my hat when I hear the name 
of the inexorable old logician of Geneva. When 
we speak of the divine foreknowledge and the 
free agency of man, and all correlated facts, we 
are easily confounded; but when we read that 
Jesus Christ by the grace of God tasted death for 
every man, the doctrine of election seems clear 
enough. Here it is: "The elect are whosoever 
will; the nonelect are whosoever won't." That 
is about the way they all put it now. I never got 
anything but good from a Presbyterian pulpit or 
book. 

By some sort of instinct, or by some sort of good 
fortune, I began about this time to move south- 
ward. I never did like cold weather. When the 
thermometer sinks toward zero, my physical com- 
fort sinks with it. The familiar hymn that speaks 
of heaven as a place where there are " no chilling 
winds 99 always had a special charm for me. One 
winter I spent in Raleigh, North Carolina. The 



72 



Sunset Views. 



Raleigh 01 that day was unique — a city whose very 
groves of oaks and stately old mansions had a quiet 
dignity in keeping with the character and manners 
of the people. It was not a fussy or garish capital : 
it was serene and sound. The state legislature, 
then in session, was a study. Its lower branch was 
presided oyer by Mr. Dobbin, afterwards Secretary 
of the Navy under President Pierce's administra- 
tion — a man who combined the polish of a French 
courtier with the wisdom and honesty of a patriot 
whose head was clear and whose heart was true. 
His opposite was General Cotton — a colossal com- 
moner from Chatham county, whose oratory had a 
cyclonic energy, whose figures of speech were as 
gigantic as was his own physique, whose orations 
excited wonder among his colleagues and applause 
in the galleries. The Standards the Democratic 
organ, was conducted by William W. Holden, a 
sturdy, scholarly-looking man with heavy black 
eyebrows and pallid complexion, who then harped 
on state rights and hurrahed for Andrew Jackson. 
The Register, the Whig organ, was conducted by 
Gales and Seaton, and had long been an exponent 
of the policies and a supporter of the candidates of 
the party whose idol was Henry Clay. Among the 
preachers I heard in Raleigh was Doctor Rufus T. 
Heflin, one of its Methodist pastors — a man whose 
face was that of one who held secret communion 
with God, and whose preaching had that indefina- 
ble yet unmistakable quality, the unction from on 
high, that differentiates the true preaching of the 
gospel from all merely human oratory. This man 
and his preaching were a link that bound me still to 
the Church in which I was born and baptized. 

I spent a season in Columbia, South Carolina. It 
was then as now the capital of that state: and a 
lively capital it was in that day of big cotton crops 



Afloat. 



73 



and other big things, good and bad, to match. It 
was an aristocratic city then, having an aristocracy 
of birth, an aristocracy of money, an aristocracy 
of brains, and an aristocracy of courage. Wade 
Hampton, son of the father so named also, was 
then a roystering young fellow with a practically 
unlimited bank account, a lover of sport, and afraid 
of nothing — typical of the rich young Southerner 
of that day. The genius of John C. Calhoun and 
the scholarship and oratory of William C. Preston 
and others like them had inoculated South Caroli- 
na and its capital city with their opinions and in- 
spired their youth with their ideals : patriotism was 
a passion and the hustings and the forum the lad- 
ders to civic glory. Chivalry was not a misnomer 
with those South Carolinians. The one unpardon- 
able sin in a public man was cowardice : it was the 
one thing despised by all men in all the grades of 
society. The fashion, so to speak, set in the di- 
rection of a lofty public virtue and an ardent and 
uncalculating patriotism and state pride, and chiv- 
alry that was w r ell named. That chivalry was -at 
times rash and passionate, but it had its roots in 
convictions that were genuine, and a devotion that 
was absolute. Doctor Whitefoord Smith was the 
preacher I heard oftenest in Columbia — and what 
a preacher he was ! All sorts of persons crowded 
to hear him. He had the easy swing of the hus- 
tings and the brilliant rhetoric of the schools, the 
evangelical glow of a man of prayer and the polish 
of a man who knew and loved the classics. Meth- 
odism in South Carolina was then aglow and mov- 
ing. Bishop William Capers was in the prime of 
his strength — a man who was a Chrysostom in the 
pulpit, a Barnabas to the sorrow-stricken. Doctor 
William M. Wightman was then editing the South- 
ern Christian Advocate, published at Charleston, 



74 



Sunset Views. 



and he was putting into it the vigorous thought, 
logical method, and elegant diction for which he 
was distinguished. He was afterwards a professor 
in the Southern University, and then made a bish- 
op ; but he never did better work for his Lord and 
for the Church than when he was editor of its or- 
gan in South Carolina. The Methodism of the 
state and of its capital was strong enough to be 
seen and felt even by a wayfarer. It made for 
me an atmosphere warm enough to keep alive in 
my soul the seeds of truth that had been sown 
therein. The arms of my mother-Church were 
still around me, holding me back from evil and 
ruin. If these pages shall ever see the light, how 
many readers will be ready to join with me in 
thanksgiving to God for the influence of Metho- 
dism which goes everywhere and always carries a 
blessing ! And how many will also be ready to 
join with me in a prayer that it may never lose the 
love that impels its movement, or the light that 
shines upon its pathway of blessing. 



A TURNING POINT. 



A TURNING POINT. 

AN attack of typhoid fever was a turning 
point in my life. It came to me in the city 
of Macon, Georgia. I was a stranger, and 
at a hotel. The mulatto boy, Albert, who 
waited upon me, saved my life. The doc- 
tors had given me up to die. I heard them say to 
the boy: " Give him anything he asks for." I 
made a sign that I wanted ice water, and it was 
brought — a pitcher full, cold as it could be. I 
drank, and drank, and drank ! I felt the cool- 
ness to my very finger-tips, and said to myself in- 
wardly, " I will get well" — and I did. It was the 
ice water that did it. The surprised doctors post- 
poned the funeral that they expected. I came up 
out of the jaws of death, and by slow degrees ap- 
petite and strength came back to me. I had time 
to think and pray, to look at my past life, and to 
ponder the paths of my feet. By a happy coinci- 
dence the mulatto boy, who was my nurse, be- 
longed to the man who became my bosom friend 
— Robert A. Smith, that unique combination of 
lawyer, soldier, and saint, of whom I have written 
elsewhere. Chivalry of the highest type of the old 
South and saintliness as sturdy as Luther's and as 
tender as Fletcher's were blended in this man. He 
crossed my path in the providence of God at a 
critical moment in my life, and I shall thank God 
forever that it was so. In a prayer meeting, or by 
the bedside of the sick or the dying, I never heard 
a man pray who seemed to be nearer to God. At 
the head of his military company, the Macon Vol- 
unteers, I never saw a knightlier figure. He was 

(77) 



7 8 



Sunset Views, 



what will be regarded as a strange anomaly in the 
good time coming for this earth — a Christian sol- 
dier. It is distinctly promised in the word of the 
Lord that wars are to cease to the ends of the 
earth, and that the nations shall learn war no more. 
This is a strange thought in this day of war ships 
that cost millions of dollars each, huge standing 
armies, forts, arsenals, and military schools for 
w T hich the masses are loaded down with taxation, 
and peace is kept between civilized nations by fear 
and skillful balancing of power rather than by rea- 
son, persuasion, and religion. Civilized nations, 
did I say? It is not Christian civilization, surely. 
The Prince of Peace will bring in another sort — 
and it will be here in this world, for it is his world. 
He shall reign until ail enemies are put under his 
feet. War is the child of sin, and the enemy of all 
that is good. The groans of the dying victims of 
the sinking war ship Maine^ in the harbor of Ha- 
vana, are in my ears as I write to-day — February 
23, 1898 — mingling with the music of the song of 
universal peace heard by the ear of faith as it comes 
nearer and yet nearer. 

That robust yet tearful evangelist, Doctor 
James E. Evans, was then pastor of the Mulberry 
Street Methodist Church in Macon. He was a 
great man all round — a Church financier of the 
first order in ability; an expository preacher, who 
rightly divided and pointedly applied the word of 
truth ; a weeping prophet, whose tears were not the 
expression of nervous weakness and shallow sen- 
timentality, but the overflowing of a mighty soul 
travailing in agony over lost souls. All Macon 
was stirred by this deep-toned preacher, who had 
power with God and man. This revival wave 
struck me when I was ready for it. On my sick- 
bed and during my convalescence the Holy Spirit 



A Turning Point. 



79 



had spoken to my soul the things that made for my 
peace because I was quiet enough to listen. I 
thought on my ways, and turned my feet to the 
testimonies of God with a solemn earnestness born 
of reflection and under the leading of the Holy 
Spirit that had followed me and striven with me 
all my life. Kneeling at the chancel with others 
one night never to be forgotten, amid prayer and 
holy song, Doctor William H. Ellison bent above 
me and softly spoke to me some words that helped 
me then and there to give myself wholly to the 
Lord — to choose the Lord Jesus Christ as my Sav- 
iour, with a purpose to follow him as long as I 
lived. There w r as no reserve in my consecration. 
Heaven came into my soul — the heaven of holy 
peace, and the joy of the Holy Ghost. The expe- 
rience was unspeakably solemn and sweet. Yes, 
thank God, it is unspeakably solemn and sweet, 
for I feel it now, as I did then. It is the same in 
its quality, but — let me write it with humility and 
adoring thankfulness — it is fuller and deeper after 
the lapse of years between the early fifties and this, 
next to the closing years of the nineties. I need 
not give a name to this experience. The initiated 
reader knows what it is; the uninitiated may know. 
Whosoever will may take freely of this water of 
life; and he may do so now. 



INITIATED. 



6 



INITIATED. 



THE year 1854 was the date of my entrance 
upon the traveling ministry of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, South, as my 
life work. The only discount upon my 
grateful joy in recording this fact is from 
a consciousness of my shortcomings. But God 
in his grace and goodness has so borne with me 
and sustained me during all these years that grati- 
tude ought to be the dominant note of my song — 
and it is. The Georgia Conference met at At- 
lanta that year. The Atlanta of 1854 was sma ll er 
than that of to-day, but it was of like quality — 
wide-awake, busy, but not too busy to be hospita- 
ble. Bishop William Capers presided; J. Blake- 
ly Smith was secretary. It was a venerable body 
of men. Somewhat has been said of some of 
them by me elsewhere. To them Georgia Meth- 
odism is indebted for much of what it has achieved. 
For the secretary, Brother J. Blakely Smith, I 
felt a peculiar regard as a friend and brother. 
This special friendship between us had its begin- 
ning in a singular incident, which is here recited 
for a good purpose, after some hesitation. It hap- 
pened in this way. Secretary Smith was a large- 
framed man, with florid complexion, deep, strong 
voice, and a masterful way in what he said and 
did. Not knowing him as he was, my first impres- 
sion concerning him was unfavorable. He seemed 
to me to be impatient and rude in his treatment of 
a large proportion of the preachers of the Confer- 
ence. My ideal of the ministerial office was a 
most lofty one, and I was shocked and grieved 



8 4 



Sunset Views* 



at what seemed to me so palpable a violation of 
ministerial and brotherly courtesy. My surprise 
and resentment increased daily. At length, during 
a forenoon session, E. P. Pitchford, a venerable 
and holy man, one of the patriarchs of the body, 
rose just in front of me and asked the secretary 
some question pertaining to the business of the 
Conference. The answer was crusty, even to rude- 
ness: in substance it seemed to imply that it was 
a silly question, such as only a simpleton would 
ask. A look of pain came over the good old man's 
face: he stood a moment in silence, then sank 
into his seat, bent his head forward shaded by his 
hands, while the tears coursed down his cheeks. 
Before I knew what I was doing I was on my feet, 
and being recognized by the bishop I said: u Bish- 
op Capers, I am not a member of this body, but I 
ask leave to say a few words just now." " Pro- 
ceed, Brother Fitzgerald," said the saintly and 
courtly man in the chair. " What I want to sa}^is 
this : that the secretary of this Conference seems 
to have two sets of manners. To you, sir, and to 
the titled and more distinguished members of this 
bod}-, he is polite almost to excess; but if he has 
once spoken kindly to any of the younger men or 
the less notable older men of this Conference.. I 
have not heard it. Look at Father Pitchford, who 
sits 3"onder in tears of humiliation : if he had been a 
dog, he could scarcely have been spoken to more 
scornfully." Just then I began to realize what I 
was doing under the impulse that had come upon 
me — the sort of impulse I always feel at an}' ex- 
hibition of arrogant officialism or tyranny of any 
sort. But a shower of "Araens " rose all around 
as I sat down with a flushed face and heart aflut- 
ter. 

The secretary rose to his feet with a pale face 



Initiated. 



35 



and trembling voice. "Brethren," he said, ;< is 
this that Brother Fitzgerald has said of me true?" 

"Yes," said the venerable Allen Turner; " yes, 
we have noticed it, and talked of it, and grieved 
over it." 

A number of assenting voices responded in dif- 
ferent parts of the Conference room. 

"As God is my judge." said the secretary with 
deep emotion, "as God is my judge, I did not 
know it. My natural manner is rather brusque or 
abrupt. To you, bishop, and to the older and 
more distinguished members of this Conference, 
to whom I have been accustomed to look up with 
reverence and admiration, my manner may have 
been more deferential than to other members of 
the Conference. But I love everv member of this 
body: if there was any rudeness in my manner, it 
was not in my heart: and as to Father Pitchford, 
I feel as if I could go to where he sits, kneel at 
his feet, ask his forgiveness, and bathe his feet 
with my tears. And as to mv young Brother Fitz- 
gerald," he continued with profound feeling, "'I 
honor him for what he has done, and will always 
love him. He spoke out to my face in open Con- 
ference what was in his heart, while my older 
brethren only censured me privately, never speak- 
ing to me of mv fault." 

There was a true man ! He became from that 
day my devoted friend : and the more fully I knew 
him, the more I admired and loved this able-bod- 
ied, warm-blooded, great-souled Georgia preacher. 
The moral of this incident, narrated with some 
hesitancy, is: First, that a good man may err un- 
consciously in his bearing: and, second, that crit- 
icisms behind his back are not likely to do him 
any good. It may be noted here that when I 
started to California Blakely Smith accompanied 



86 



Sunset Views. 



me from Macon as far as Fort Valley on a cold, 
frosty morning, saying: "I want to be the last 
Georgian that gives your hand a farewell shake. ? ' 
He has passed over into the world of spirits. If he 
were here on earth, his manly nature would un- 
derstand the motive that prompts me to recall this 
incident of the far-away past. 

Blessed be the memory of those old Georgia 
preachers! About the time I had gotten through 
my impulsive arraignment of the secretary, it oc- 
curred to me that I had committed ecclesiastical 
hara-kiri: that that company of venerable and holy 
men would look upon me as a pert and pragmatic 
youth, unsuited to the solemn and delicate func- 
tions of the Christian ministry. But they took me 
to their hearts, and made me feel the glow of affec- 
tion which has not cooled to this hour. I was ad- 
mitted on trial with expressions of hearty good will 
that would have moved a colder man than I think 
myself to be. Dear old Georgia! my second 
mother on the religious side. May the God of our 
fathers smile on their children's children unto the 
latest generation ! 

Thus was I initiated. 



MY ENVIRONMENT. 



MY ENVIRONMENT. 



1WAS fully initiated into Church relationship 
in Georgia, and I shall always be thankful 
that it was w r here it was, w r hen it was, and 
how it was that this came about. My en- 
vironment was favorable, and God was lead- 
ing me. Georgia Methodism was then very power- 
ful, a militant army accustomed to victory. Look 
for a moment at the men who stood in her pulpits 
and served at her altars. The two Pierces — the 
father and son, "the old doctor " and the bishop 
— were then at the zenith of their power and pop- 
ularity. George F. Pierce was then the pulpit 
star of Georgia — an Apollo in physical beauty, a 
pulpit orator possessing every quality that excites 
the admiration and delight of listening multitudes, 
and, best of all, gifted with a spiritual insight that 
enabled him to flash into the hearts of sinners the 
search-light that made them see the exceeding sin- 
fulness of sin. Georgia was magnetized by this 
favorite son. His personality pervaded the state. 
The last declamation or pungent aphorism of 
"George Pierce," as he was fondly called to the 
last, was current coin in all circles of society in 
Georgia. That state is richer to-day because his 
genius was sanctified genius. This well-worn 
word is used thoughtfully in this connection: 
sanctified genius is the highest human instrumen- 
tality that God uses to bless the world. The " old 
doctor," Lovick Pierce, the father, was not as 
"flowery" or rhetorical or brilliantly declamatory 
as his son, but it was the undoubting belief of 
many of the elder Georgians of that dav that he 

(89) 



9° 



Sunset Views, 



was the profoundest thinker and the ablest ex- 
pounder of the Scriptures then living. He was 
truly a marvelous preacher— deeply spiritual, with 
a mighty sweep of thought and a vocabulary to 
match, with the unction of the Holy One that lit- 
erally made his face to shine. He delighted in the 
grandest themes, and his diction had the roll of 
evangelical thunder. The simple grandeur of 
his character had a charm for all sorts of peo- 
ple. The rudest rustic of the backwoods, the 
profoundest jurist, and the most learned scholar 
alike held him in reverent esteem. That mighty 
man of God, Samuel Anthony — "old Ironsides" 
he was fondly called by his admirers — was preach- 
ing sermons that stirred to the depths the con- 
sciences of entire communities. Single sermons 
by him almost wrought moral revolutions where 
they were preached. He did not fear the face of 
man, and shunned not to declare the whole coun- 
sel of God. His tall, gaunt, sinewy figure, his 
rugged features and severe simplicity of dress 
were in keeping with his character and his mes- 
sage. At times he rose to heights of almost super- 
natural grandeur of thought and expression, and 
at others he melted into a tenderness that was over- 
whelming. In the one mood he was an Elijah ; in 
the other, a Jeremiah. My faith in God is stronger 
to this hour because I heard the sermons and 
prayers of this old Georgia hero-saint. And 
there was William M. Crumley, a wise and holy 
man, a spiritual battery always charged; John 
W. Knight, an eccentric genius, who in one 
mood was ecstatic as an angel and in another 
wished he were "a black cat"; Eustace W. 
Speer, whose short expository sermons sparkled 
with gems of wisdom and flashes of rhetorical 
beauty from the first sentence to the last; Ed- 



My Environment. 



9 x 



ward H. Myers, who had the gift of usefulness 
more than that of popularity, a scholar worthy 
of the name, a preacher who preferred to profit 
rather than merely to please his hearers, a teach- 
er who put conscience as well as capability into 
his work in the schoolroom; William Arnold — 
6 'Uncle Billy,''" as he was familiarly called — who 
combined common sense and uncommon spiritual 
power in the pulpit and in the councils of the 
Church; Jesse Boring, a man of genius and a 
man of many tribulations, whose sermons at times 
reached the most startling and effective climaxes; 
John M. Bonnell, whose saintliness and scholar- 
ship made him a sort of Georgia Melanchthon; 
John C. Simmons, sturdy as a Georgia oak, fer- 
vent as a tropical summer; Alexander Means, in 
whom pedagogy, poetry, and pulpit eloquence 
were delightfully blended; Augustus B. Long- 
street, best known as a humorist, but whose best 
work was done in the pulpit and in the classroom, 
whose influence impressed on the fleshly tablets of 
the hearts of his pupils will last when his " Geor- 
gia Scenes" may be forgotten; John P. Duncan, 
a sunny-souled man, whose sweet spiritual songs 
helped to float many a penitent over the bars of 
unbelief into the still waters of peace; and then a 
lot of younger men, some of whom have since 
made their mark: John W. Burke, the friendli- 
est of the friendly, a lover of children and beloved 
by all; J. O. A. Clark, a thinker whose logic was 
tuned to love; J. W. Hinton, who hewed huge 
masses of truth out of the quarry of inspiration 
and built them into homiletic structures solid and 
stately; W. P. Harrison, a walking encyclopedia 
of religious knowledge, guileless as a child, wise 
with the wisdom that comes from above; Thomas 
F. Jordan, an eloquent man of sanguine temper, 



9 2 



Sunset Vtezvs. 



who kindled quickly and set his hearers aglow: 
George G. X. MacDonell. a crystal of Christian 
character without a flaw; Oliver P. Anthony, a 
kingly-looking man with soul to match, whose 
heart was as gentle as that of a woman, whose 
courage was that of a knighthood when knights 
were knights indeed: Robert W. Bigham, who 
on both sides of the continent has lived a life and 
preached a gospel that made many to see the beau- 
ty of divine truth and to follow Him who is the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life: W. H. Christian, 
who is a man with that gift of common sense which 
the Head of the Church is always ready to utilize 
for its edification; W. F. Glenn, an Israelite with- 
out guile, an editor whose work is pitched on the 
New Testament plane, a man whom it is impossi- 
ble not to love and to trust: these, and many more 
not less worth}- of mention, were then at work as 
Methodist preachers in Georgia. 

For a special reason I mention one more name — ■ 
that of William Davies, one of the young men who 
was then just starting in the ministry. He was a 
tall, handsome man, ruddy-faced, blue-eyed, grace- 
ful in every motion, and of presence magnetic. 
He came of a preaching family, but for a time he 
had been "wild." In one of the deep-reaching 
revivals that were prevalent in Georgia in that day 
he was powerfully converted — that is the old 
phrase; the initiated reader will understand it. 
He heard and obeved a call to preach which im- 
mediately followed his conversion. i; Fitzgerald." 
he said to me one day, 44 1 love God more than 
you can love him: he has done more for me than 
for anybody else on earth " — his eves swimming in 
tears as he spoke. I have had the same feeling 
many times. Who that ever felt the joy of par- 
doned sin has not had it? Under the ministry 



My Environment. 



93 



of such men as these a living membership was 
brought in and built up in the Church — men like 
Matthew Rylander, whose prayers opened the 
gates of heaven and brought glory from the mercy- 
seat; Ed. Salisbury, whose songs had the touch 
that was sweeter than art could give, the touch of 
the live coal from off the altar; Thomas R. R. 
Cobb, a statesman who in public life exhibited 
the integrity and ability that befitted his sphere, a 
Methodist who in his private life united a humility 
that was most beautiful with a social glow that 
was irresistible; Walter T. Colquitt, politician 
and preacher, Methodist and Democrat, strangely 
mixed, a very brilliant man; Robert Toombs, 
whose Methodist wife, together with his friend- 
ship for George F. Pierce, brought him into close 
touch with Methodism. Pierce and Toombs — the 
bishop and the senator — were classmates at the 
University of Georgia and close friends all their 
lives. It is said that once in a confidential mood 
Toombs laid his hand on Pierce's knee, saying, 
' ' George , I want you to take me into the Church . ' ' 
' 4 Why do you wish it? Are you ready to begin in 
earnest a Christian life?" asked the bishop. "No, 
George," replied Toombs, "I am not fit for mem- 
bership in the Church. But I have a fear that I 
may die suddenly some day, and some fool might 
say that I was a skeptic." From the United States 
Senator to the humblest walks in life [Methodism 
in Georgia was regnant, touching all classes and 
making an atmosphere for its adherents warm with 
spiritual life. The class meeting was still a living 
institution of the Church in Georgia, in which its 
young life was watched over and developed in a 
way that promoted stability and growth. I was 
enrolled at once as a member of a class — the one 
led by Robert A. Smith, of whom I have spoken 



94 



Sunset Views. 



elsewhere, and whose name, as my eye fails upon 
it on this page, makes me feel like saying: My 
God, I thank thee that there is such a thing in this 
earthly life as Christian friendship, and for the 
hope that it will be renewed and perfected and 
perpetuated in the unending years that await us in 
the world of spirits. 



MY FIRST SERMON. 



MY FIRST SERMON. 



IT must have been foreordained that I was to 
be a preacher of the gospel. A sort of pre- 
sentiment that it was to be so had been with me 
from my early boyhood. It was in Doctor 
Penn's prayer at my baptism at two days old. 
It was the wish and the expectation of my mother. 
It was like a prophetic undertone through all my 
previous life. My Methodist brethren and other 
Christian friends now seemed to expect it. Three 
things entered into my call to preach, as it seemed 
to me then and as it seems to me now — the mov- 
ing of the Holy Spirit, the consensus of the 
Church, and God's providential leadings. I was 
first licensed to exhort — a function now almost 
disused, but once greatly magnified among Meth- 
odists. Some of these exhorters preached well: 
some preachers only exhorted warmly. Exhorta- 
tion ought to be a part of most sermons. Not 
every zealous young man waited for official license 
in those days, for the Methodists of the time had 
felt, believed, and hoped for what was worth tell- 
ing. They had liberty. The class meeting was 
a school of the prophets in a gracious sense. The 
leaders were not always learned in literature, sci- 
ence, philosophy, or art, but as a rule they were 
wise in things pertaining to practical religion. 
They knew the Bible, they knew Jesus as a Sav- 
iour, they knew human nature, they knew human 
life, and they gave to many young men the first 
impetus toward the pulpit. Taking a portion of 
Scripture, I began to expound and exhort. The 
exposition was doubtless most elementary in its 
7 (97) 



9§ 



Sunset Views. 



quality, and the exhorting was what might be ex- 
pected from a young exhorter whose chief tenet 
and prof oundest feeling were that Jesus Christ was 
the Saviour of sinners in the present tense. 

My first sermon was preached in a Presbyterian 
church. It happened thus : I was on a visit to my 
kindred in North Carolina. On a bright Sunday 
morning I had driven with my sister Martha over 
to the old Bethesda Presbyterian church, near the 
line between Caswell and Rockingham counties, 
with the expectation of hearing the Rev. Dr. J. G. 
Doll, a distinguished preacher of that denomina- 
tion. On our arrival I saw that the grove around 
the old country church was crowded with horses 
and vehicles of all sorts, from the stylish family 
carriages of the rural " quality' 5 down to the most 
primitive carryalls and lean-bodied nags of the 
poorer sort. As I drove up to the edge of the 
grove that songful old saint and elder, Uncle John- 
ny Jones, who seemed to be watching for me, 
came up, took my horse's bridle, fastened him to 
a swinging limb of an oak, and after helping my 
sister to alight took me aside. 

" Oscar, " he said very solemnly, "you must 
preach here to-day." 

'•'Uncle Johnny, I am not a preacher," I an- 
swered, flushing with a peculiar feeling that came 
over me. 

"You have been holding meetings, haven't 
you ? ' ' he asked. 

"Yes, but only praver meetings among our 
Methodist people: I have no license to preach." I 
answered. 

"Oscar, you must preach here to-day!" said 
the venerable man with deep solemnity. "A note 
from Dr. Doll tells me that he was seized with 
sudden sickness and is at Yanceyville in bed, un- 



My First Sermon. 



99 



able to get here. You see what a great crowd of 
people have come out to hear him, some of them 
living ten miles or more away. There will be a 
great disappointment if we have no preaching, and 
harm will result to the cause of religion. Oscar, 
you must preach ! ' ' 

A struggle had been going on within me while 
the good old man was speaking. I felt that the 
hour had come for the decision of a momentous 
question. I said: 

" Go into the pulpit with me, conduct the pre- 
liminary exercises, and then I will do whatever I 
feel I ought to do." 

6 6 All right," he said cheerfully. 

As I walked down the aisle of the church, it 
seemed to me almost that it was a league in length; 
and as I sat in the pulpit and glanced at that wait- 
ing congregation, the faces seemed to multiply 
themselves indefinitely. It was a clear case of 
pulpit scare. The dear old elder was a sweet 
singer and gifted in prayer. When he had fin- 
ished I had a text ready, and a full heart. The 
text was Jeremiah xii. 5 : 66 If thou hast run with the 
footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how 
canst thou contend with horses ? and if in the land 
of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied 
thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jor- 
dan?" That sermon will not here be given even 
in outline — if outline it had. But if ever I have 
had "liberty" in preaching, I had it that day. 
Many of my old schoolmates and early friends 
were in the congregation, curiosity and sympathy 
mingling in their consciousness. A great tide of 
feeling swelled up from the depths of my heart 
and overflowed all. We all wept together. The 
old elder praised God, and old Bethesda was 
aglow. I had my license to preach: surely the 
LcfC. 



IOO 



Sunset Views. 



Lord had settled for me the question of my voca- 
tion. His Church had already been drawing me 
the same way. The Church and its Head draw 
the willing soul in the same direction when the 
Holy Spirit has control. Dr. Doll came up the 
next day: special services were begun, and many 
souls were brought to Christ. Surely the Lord 
has his own best w 7 ay of working. My life-work 
was found, and my soul was flooded with a peace 
that was the peace of God. 



PREACHING TO THE BLACKS. 



PREACHING TO THE BLACKS. 



ON my return to Georgia I received a local 
preacher's license in the city of Macon. 
Shortly thereafter Dr. Mason, who had 
charge of the negro Methodist congre- 
gation, died, and I was put in charge of 
it. I have a lively and grateful recollection of 
this experience. Those black Methodists were 
numerous, responsive, musical, and demonstrative 
to a degree that was astonishing to uninitiated vis- 
itors. They gave me their hearts and helped me 
much in many ways. My first Sunday with them 
was memorable for the prayer that followed my 
attempt to preach. I had called on Abram Mc- 
Gregor, the patriarch of the flock — a tall, black 
man, with high cheek bones, a face whose lines 
were all strong and good, and a soul that loved 
God and feared nothing but sin. By virtue of his 
strength of character and deep piety he was a sort 
of patriarch and untitled king among his people. 
He prayed at my request: "O Lord, we thank 
thee for de gospel which has been dispensed wid 
on dis occasion, and which de people have listened 
to wid so much patience. Bless our young broth- 
er wid a big heart and a weak voice " — and so on. 
I have never heard a more honest prayer, and in 
some of his verbal lapses the old man spoke wiser 
than he knew. 

My predecessor, Dr. Mason, was a high-met- 
tled Christian scholar and teacher, spontaneous 
and trenchant — a man of work. He spoke his 
own thoughts in his own way. He was one of 
many men of large ability and deep piety who gave 

( io 3) 



I<>4 Sunset Viezvs. 

their service to the negroes in those days, helping 
to prepare them tor the tremendous changes that 
were swiftly coming. The colored Methodists of 
the South had as good preaching as the white 
ones before the war between the states. In fact, 
as a rule they had the same preachers. If now 
and then a weak or doubtful young brother was 
sent to a colored charge as an experiment, the 
same thing was done with white charges. It 
is a blessed thing that slavery is gone. It is 
also a blessed thing that before their emancipation 
through the zealous ministry of the several Chris- 
tian denominations in the South — the Methodists 
not the least — the negroes of that section had at- 
tained the rudiments of Christian civilization suffi- 
ciently to make the transition both desirable and 
safe. The world's equitable second thought is al- 
ready beginning to see this. The Christian peo- 
ple of the South did well for the negroes, all 
things considered, under the old regime. But 
their work for them is not all done. They have a 
dutv to perform in the present tense — the duty of 
giving them the gospel in its fullness of power and 
plenitude of blessing. In discharging this duty 
they will at the same time conserve their own 
highest interest and the welfare of the colored 
millions dwelling in their midst. I am at the date of 
this writing (February 3, 1S9S ) still glad to lend a 
helping hand to this work in behalf of the negro 
race, and there is surely an open door. This 
seems to me a good place to say: The opportuni- 
ty waited for does not come: the good work you 
can do comes to you when you are ready for duty. 



SENT TO SAVANNAH. 



SENT TO SAVANNAH. 



1WAS ' ' read out" to Andrew Chapel, city of 
Savannah, junior preacher, with William M. 
Crumley as my senior. The ride on the rail- 
road from Macon to Savannah was memora- 
ble to me. I was quite a young man, and that 
day felt that I was even younger than I looked . The 
question came into my mind: What will the Savan- 
nah Methodists think when they see me? Will 
they not ask themselves, What was Bishop Ca- 
pers thinking of when he appointed such a boy to 
preach in such a city as Savannah? The tempter 
rode with me all the way— making, as it now seems 
to me, a final and desperate assault on my faith and 
courage as a minister of the gospel. I pictured to 
myself the astonishment and disappointment of the 
good people when they saw how raw a youth had 
been sent to them clothed with pastoral author- 
ity. The suggestion presented itself : Why not flee 
from such a trial? Why not go to one of the ho- 
tels, on your arrival at Savannah, spend the night, 
and on the morrow take passage on a steamer to 
New York? The difficulties, humiliations, and 
trials of the position assigned me presented them- 
selves to my mind most vividly and persistently as 
I swept along on the cars. If a personal devil ever 
assaulted a young preacher, he assaulted me then 
and there. I had sinister companionship that was 
invisible, but not unfelt, riding through Georgia 
that day of trial. While thus agitated by conflict- 
ing feelings and distressful thoughts, the train 
rolled into the station — lo, we were at Savannah! 
Before I had time even to look at my hand-bag- 

(107) 



io8 



Sunset Views. 



gage, several kindly-looking gentlemen came walk- 
ing through the cars with inquiring faces. One 
of them paused as he looked at me, and said: 

66 We are looking for Brother Fitzgerald, the 
young preacher who has been appointed to Sa- 
vannah — do you know whether he is aboard the 
train?" 

With a sort of dazed feeling I told them that I 
was the man, and almost before I knew it they 
had me and my baggage in a carriage whirling 
rapidly along the streets. The carriage halted, 
and one of the brethren said: 

' 6 Brother Fitzgerald, here we are at Brother 
Stone's, where you are to stop." 

A motherly-looking lady met me in the hall, and 
after a very kindly greeting said: " Come with 
me, and I will show you your room." Leading me 
upstairs, I was shown into an elegantly furnished 
apartment. " This is your home," said the good 
lady; " here you will stay while you live in Savan- 
nah. Come down now and get some supper," 
she added cheerily, leading the way into the din- 
ing room, where a nice hot meal was waiting. 

It was all like a dream. In spite of my previous 
misgivings and depression, I actually began to feel 
comfortable. The mother-touch had reached me. 
Blessed be God for the women who have that 
touch ! Without them how much darker and cold- 
er would be this world into which so much of 
trouble and pain has somehow found entrance ! 
Whoso hath felt true mother-love finds it easy to 
believe in God's love. Among the memories of 
my life that will not fade is that of this Savan- 
nah couple — Marshal Stone and his wife. He, 
the former city marshal, was as soldier-like in 
character as Andrew Jackson, whom he greatly 
resembled in personal appearance. A tall, grave- 



Sent to Savannah. 



faced man, with thin lips and firm-set features, he 
could have been stern in his looks but for a serene 
benignity that made you feel that he was a strong 
man to trust rather than a strong man to fear. 
That was Marshal Stone — a man who hated all 
that was mean and loved everybody. His wife 
was the most spontaneous, irrepressible, quaint, 
outspoken, witty, and practical of uncanonized 
saints. She said the queerest and did the kind- 
est things all the time. Even in her most sol- 
emn religious moods and acts there was often a 
touch of humor; her most humorous sayings and 
doings had often a tender or solemn side that gave 
her acquaintances many a surprise. Her descrip- 
tive powers were such that her narratives and dia- 
logues were almost as vivid as life itself. This 
couple had no children of their own, and having 
ample means at their command they were the ben- 
efactors of every good cause and the helpers of all 
who needed help in Savannah. They belonged 
to the Methodist Church, and gave it love, la- 
bor, and money without stint. I linger on their 
names, with a tenderness in my heart — as well I 
may. They gave me my first preacher-home, and 
with a grace and heartiness all their own provid- 
ed for all my wants, without money and without 
price. ' 'This is your home," she said to me on 
the night of my arrival — and she made it so in the 
fullest sense of the word. When I meet them in 
the home of the soul — this is my undoubting hope 
now — that home will be more a home to me be- 
cause I shall see their kindly faces and hear their 
kindly voices. Many traveling preachers whose 
eyes may fall on these lines will echo the prayer: 
Father in heaven, give thy special grace and 
abounding mercy unto these children of thine 
who give homes to thy ministering servants ; grant 



no 



Sunset Views. 



that their dwellings here may be blessed with thy 
continual benediction, and that they may reach 
that home above where the family of God shall 
live together with him in whose presence there is 
fullness of joy, and at whose right hand there are 
pleasures for evermore. Amen. 



SAVANNAH/ 



SAVANNAH. 



THE Savannah of 1854 was unique in its 
blending of simplicity and repose with a 
polish and sparkle in its social life that 
gave its old denizens the undoubting con- 
viction that it was the best place on earth, 
and made it easy for a new-comer to fall in love 
with the place. The old Southern tone was dom- 
inant, but there was an infusion of Northerners 
sufficient to give somewhat of the briskness and 
breeziness that are found wherever Yankees are 
found in all latitudes of earth. The rule in that 
day was, that the Yankee who came South to stay 
did so because he had an affinit}^ for the people 
and fondness for the climate. What fire-eaters 
were many of them in politics ! What sticklers for 
i ' strict construction," and all that sort of thing! 
The peripatetic Northern travelers who came on a 
visit to make trade, or for professional letter-writ- 
ing for the newspapers, were of different types, 
and had a different standing. Believing that these 
visitors were looking for the seamy side of South- 
ern society, that was the side shown to them. "I 
am a truer Southerner than you are," once said a 
lawyer from Connecticut to me ; " you are a South- 
ern man by birth, I by choice." The rule worked 
both ways : there were Southern-born men that ex- 
hibited every peculiarity that made the word "Yan- 
kee " synonymous with everything that a brave, 
generous soul dislikes. Sectionalism was then ab- 
surd, unjust, and hurtful, disgusting in its grosser 
forms. Neither the North nor the South had a 
monopoly of that or of any other silliness or mean- 
3 " ( IX 3) 



II 4 



Sunset Views. 



ness. When the war between the states came, 
these Northern-born Southerners were among the 
first to go to the front, and they spilled their blood 
freely for the cause of the South. Abraham Lin- 
coln and George H. Thomas were both Southern- 
born men who are canonized as political saints in 
the calendar of the North. Admiral Farragut 
was also a Southerner by birth. The accident of 
birth means nothing as to ingrain quality. The 
sectionalist in the broad ? vulgar sense of the word 
has been a nuisance in both sections of our coun- 
try. He may be tracked by the marks of blood 
and fire. A sectionalist in this evil and narrow 
sense of the word is an anachronism in these 
United States in this year of our Lord 1898. He 
is lonesome, and soliloquizes mostly when he says 
anything in his own bad way. 

But I am digressing, and will come back to Sa- 
vannah, ante helium* Dreamy, delightful, seduc- 
tive old Savannah! I have not seen it for more 
than forty years, but the memor}^ of it is fresh and 
sweet and sacred. If I were a poet, I would put 
its Bonaventure Cemetery into verse. It is itself 
a poem. There is nothing just like it elsewhere: 
the live-oak avenues, draped with the long sea- 
moss, gently stirred by the soft breeze; a sky that 
bends in deepest blue above, with no sound to 
break the stillness save the faint note of a song 
bird in the minor key, or the whisper of a breeze 
like "the sighing of broken reeds" that sym- 
bolizes that of breaking hearts. Sidney Lanier 
might have sung the song of Bonaventure had he 
seen it as I have seen it. The elegance of the city 
and the heartiness of the country met you in the old 
Savannah in a way that gave you wonder and de- 
light. The gentlemen of the old school were so 
gentlemanly in their own lofty, easy-going way; 



Savannah. 



the women of the old school were so ladylike in 
their own gracious, queenly way; the tradesmen 
were so urbane and so neighborly, rather than sharp 
and shoplike; the old negroes were so grand, and 
the young negroes were so jolly, in the old Savan- 
nah, that whoso once tasted the flavor of its life 
never lost its charm. And its religious life was of 
a type all its own. The Baptists were numerous 
and zealous, both among the white people and the 
negroes. The negro Baptists were led by Andrew 
Marshall, a black apostle whose word was law 
among them, and whose life was patterned after 
that of his Lord. The Roman Catholics were Ro- 
manists naturalized, liberalized, and largely evan- 
gelized by their Georgia environment. The Pres- 
byterians were as solid as if molded in Geneva, 
and as sunny as a Georgia landscape in a clear Oc- 
tober day. The Episcopalians were a people w r ho 
had scholars in theirpulpits ; whose high-churchism 
was not noisy; whose traditions were comforting 
to themselves, but not obtrusive; whose social life 
was for the most part very sweet. Their Bishop 
Elliott was a colossal and aesthetic giant, gor- 
geous-looking in his episcopal robes ; a man who 
knew botany and theology, who held to the tactual 
succession in the ministry, and was a judge of good 
painting and good eating. And the Methodists — 
the stirring, wide-awake, militant, moving, musical 
Methodists of Savannah — they went everywhere, 
and had a hand in everything good that was go- 
ing on, now and then making a tangent under a 
sudden impulse or inspiration. The presiding 
elder was John W. Glenn, who personally looked 
like the pictures of Martin Luther — sturdy, thick- 
set, heavy-jawed, large-brained, firm of lip, with a 
gleam in his eye that was martial or tender as oc- 
casion demanded. I have seen him walk the floor 



n6 



Sunset Views. 



like a caged lion, chafing over follies that he saw 
but could not abate in ecclesiastical administra- 
tion; again, I have seen him the center of a social 
circle where good fellowship reached the high- 
water mark; and again, and yet again, I have seen 
him in the pulpit, the incarnation of ministerial fidel- 
ity, pleading with sinners with melting tenderness, 
expostulating with backsliders with aw r ful earnest- 
ness, or calling believers up to the heights of ho- 
liness where the sun shines night and day. He 
knew the blessed paradox expressed in that last 
clause of the foregoing sentence — in the night of 
sorrow and pain as in the sunshine of gladness 
alike, he walked in the light of the Lord. And my 
senior was William M. Crumley, a low- voiced, 
slow-moving, magnetic man, whose persuasions 
brought multitudes of souls to the pitying Christ, 
whose prayers at the bedside of the sick and in the 
chambers death-darkened made a channel for the 
stream of heavenly peace and comfort to souls that 
were burdened and hearts that were broken. Dur- 
ing the epidemic visitation of yellow fever — that 
oft-recurring scourge of scourges of our South At- 
lantic seaports — sectarian lines were obliterated: 
Crumley, who stayed at his post of duty, was the 
pastor of all classes, rich and poor alike; and when 
it was over, his name w^as tenderly spoken by thou- 
sands in the homes of the smitten city. The Chris- 
tian heroism developed during these awful visita- 
tions illustrates a compensatory law of God : they 
leave the stricken communities sorrowful and pov- 
erty-smitten, but richer in all that is precious in 
Christian civilization and ennobling in human 
character. 



TO CALIFORNIA. 



TO CALIFORNIA. 



FROM Savannah I was called to go to Cali- 
fornia by the fatherly and apostolic Bishop 
James O. Andrew. That such a man as 
he should become the center of a fierce 
sectional struggle, is one of the strange 
things that now and then take place in this strange 
world. I will not even briefly rehearse that story 
here. We have already had too much of it. Let 
us not dig up any buried quarrels, but rather scat- 
ter every seed of love that we can gather from the 
past. The dear old bishop made the call, and I 
obeyed. My sturdy and strong-willed presiding 
elder, John W. Glenn, in what he felt to be right- 
eous wrath, paced the floor and stormed against 
my going. But I went under a strong persuasion 
of duty. Savannah gave me a motherly fare- 
well. My pen lingers on the page as the image of 
one woman comes up before my mind — that of 
Mrs. Marshal Stone, who had given me a home 
and almost a mother's love. Her thoughtfulness 
in my behalf blessed every step of the journey and 
made itself felt long afterwards. It was of the sort 
that forgets nothing and grudges nothingin doing a 
kindness. I started on my journey with her kiss 
and her tears upon my face. And what a journey 
it was ! Its first episode was one never to be for- 
gotten — one to be thankful for forever. At Enon, 
Alabama, a quiet little village on Chunnenuggee 
Ridge among the pines, I took a companion for 
my California trip, and for life — and she has been 
my good angel from that hour to this. We started 
five minutes after the ceremony that united our 

("9) 



120 



Sunset Views. 



lives. She sits on my left, sewing, as I write this 
by lamplight on the evening of March 23, 1898 — 
God bless her ! 

At New Orleans we spent a few days, includ- 
ing a Sunday. It was then a gay metropolis, 
Frenchy in its glitter, Southern in its glow. Its 
brunette beauties shaded off into octoroons with 
rounded forms and laughing faces, deepening 
into the honest, solid blackness of the genuine 
negroes, who kept in Louisiana the complex- 
ion and the jollity they brought with them from 
the Congo. It was a jolly city in that day, unlike 
any other American city. The Picayune of that 
date was one of the unique newspapers that had a 
flavor and a field all its own, with a touch of indig- 
enous literature in its columns and a bonhomie 
that gave it a national good will. Sunday was 
mostly a French Sunday — thatis to say, it had much 
frolic and some religious worship. Here I met for 
the first time McTyeire and Keener, afterwards 
made bishops. McTyeire was editing the New 
Orleans Christian Advocate, and winning his spurs 
as a thinker, writer, and leader in the Church. 
The questions he asked me, and the things he said 
to me, went straight to the mark, and made me 
feel that I had met a man who was a mind-reader, 
and who knew all that was going on. Keener 
was a presiding elder, whose quaintly classic and 
incisive sayings and heroic methods were much 
talked of even then. " Yes, he's a Keener, sure 
enough !" said an admirer, with a chuckle, quoting 
one of his sharp sayings. These two men strong- 
ly impressed the young preacher who has always 
found a fascination in the study of men. To this 
day I have not forgotten the preaching of Dr. J. 
B. Walker at the Carondelet Methodist Church 
on Sunday. A small, well-knit, dark-skinned, 



To California, 



121 



black-haired, heavy-whiskered man, with brilliant 
black eyes, with a fluency that was almost miracu- 
lous in its rapidity, with a rhetoric that was ring- 
ing and an enunciation that was as clear as it was 
quick, he preached for about thirty minutes — it 
seemed less to me — and quit when in full motion, 
leaving, as it seemed to me, everybody wishing he 
would go on. A Gulf breeze was not fresher than 
his thought; his manner was as graceful as the 
movement of a clipper-ship under full sail. Years 
afterwards I made an earnest effort to bring Dr. 
Walker to San Francisco, believing that if any 
man could get a hearing for Southern Methodism 
in that city, he was the man. But who knows ? He 
might have met there his pulpit Waterloo, as not 
a few other notabilities have done in that city, which 
has its own climate and its own way of think- 
ing, speaking, and doing on all lines of thought, 
speech, and action. 

Linus Parker was then a young preacher in 
New Orleans, and had begun to attract atten- 
tion and admiration by writing articles for the 
press that were out of the usual style — original 
in thought, with subtle touches of insight and 
flashes of beauty that made the reader stop, re- 
read, and linger with delight over his charming 
page. He was elected to the office of bishop in 
1882. Overwhelmed with the weight of the re- 
sponsibility thus incurred, he grasped my hand 
with tears in his eyes, and said: " My brethren 
have made a mistake; I am not suited to the 
place." Sweet-souled, finely-tuned Linus Par- 
ker! His humility was equal to his genius. His 
course as a bishop of the Church was quickly 
run. As ointment poured forth is his name. 

A lively time we had in Nicaragua, en route to 
California. It was just after Walker's first filibus- 



122 



Sunset Views. 



ter raid. The Nicaraguans naturally regarded all 
North Americans with suspicion and dislike. They 
were sulky, and we were watchful. At the " Half- 
way House," between the head of the lake and 
San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific coast side, we had 
a night adventure that was somewhat exciting. 
About six hundred native Nicaraguan soldiers had 
gathered there to meet Filibuster Walker, should 
he come again. There w r ere about ninety of us 
North Americans. An enterprising agent of the 
evil one had opened a bar for the sale of liquor 
in a thatched shanty near by. Men of both 
parties drank freely. A half-drunken Ameri- 
can and a half-drunken ' ' Greaser" came to 
high words, and at length our man slapped the 
face of the other, with an oath. Instantly there 
was a clamor in angry, broken Spanish, as the 
Nicaraguans leveled their six hundred muskets at 
us. Almost as quickly, our men drew their re- 
volvers, and stood ready. It promised to be a 
lively and not altogether unequal fight — six hun- 
dred tawny natives armed with old flintlock mus- 
kets, on the one side, and ninety North Americans 
armed with their deadly quick-shooting revolvers, 
on the other. It was a critical situation — the pull- 
ing of a single trigger on either side would have 
made bloody work. I was in the front of our par- 
ty, mounted on a mule, unarmed, perfectly sober, 
but somewhat anxious. The women of our party 
w r ere seated in w T agons, the rest of our men, like 
myself, being mounted on mules ready to start. 
Acting upon an impulse, advancing a few steps to 
get in sight and hearing of both parties, I lifted 
my hat and said: 

" Gentlemen, I have witnessed this whole diffi- 
culty from the first. This fellow" — pointing as I 
spoke to the man who had assaulted the Nicaraguan 



To Calif 07' nia. 



123 



— " is mostly blamable for all the trouble. He is 
the aggressor, and is a disgrace to the American 
name." 

Amid approving grunts from the Nicaraguans 
our half-drunken American began an interruption, 
when a tall Pennsylvanian of our party, who spoke 
Spanish and had acted as my interpreter, turned 
quickly upon him and, placing the muzzle of his 
revolver within an inch or so of his head, said 
sternly : 

"Hush, you scoundrel! If you speak another 
word, I will blow your head off." 

The ruffian did not speak again: he saw the 
flash in the tall Pennsylvanian's eye and caught 
the ring of decision in his voice. (When I put in 
this parenthesis the statement that this Pennsyl- 
vanian was Captain James McLean, many old Cali- 
fornians will recognize him as the popular "Jim" 
McLean who was so well known in the southern 
mines — as brave a man as ever wore a soldier's 
uniform. He had won distinction and his title in 
the Mexican war.) 

Seeing my opportunity, I said: "Gentlemen, 
let this fellow stay here and drink and quarrel and 
fight if he wishes to do so, but let us go on our 
journey, and take care of these women who are un- 
der our protection. All in favor of so doing say, 
Aye." 

Every man save one shouted, "Aye!" The 
right chord had been struck— no American wor- 
thy of the name ever fails to respond when ap- 
pealed to in behalf of woman. We are a gallant 
people, though not always entirely consistent in 
dealing with women and the woman question- 
so called. There is not much of a " question" 
about it where the Bible and a true manhood, 
rather than whisky and infidelity, decide. 



124 



Sunset Views. 



' 'All right, here we go!" I shouted, putting 
the spur to my little mule ; and away we went un- 
der the tropical stars, our men giving " Three 
cheers for the women!" as we started. It was 
an exhilarating gallop of fourteen miles ; and when 
the steamer's lights at San Juan del Sur came in 
sight, how we shouted ! That was my first glance 
at the world's great ocean — the Pacific, so called 
— and it was a glad sight as matters stood with us 
that night. 



ON THE PACIFIC SIDE. 



ON THE PACIFIC SIDE. 



ON the Pacific side — so this chapter is 
headed. But it was a misnomer as Ave 
found it. In the Gulf of Tehuantepec 
the storm on the sea was startling to a 
landsman ; even the oldest sailors looked 
anxious as the stanch ship rolled and tossed on the 
billows, the wind blowing a heavier gale than I 
had ever seen before. One of the sailors — a ro- 
bust, friendly-faced Irishman — gave me a piece of 
wisdom that I have not forgotten. Meeting him 
on the guards of the vessel about twilight, the sea 
rolling heavily, the wind whistling, and the ship 
pitching fearfully, I asked him : 

6 ' What sort of weather will we have to-night?" 
66 1 '11 tell you in the morning," he answered, 
looking at the sky, his eye twinkling as he spoke. 

He was an old sailor. He had learned the lesson 
that comes to most men who live long in this world 
— this lesson, namely, that it is safer to prophesy 
after, rather than before, the event. A hasty or 
passionate prediction commits him who makes it 
to an irrational and obstinate effort to bring the 
thing to pass. The storms of life cannot be pre- 
dicted in advance; the mystery of life cannot be 
understood now. We will be told in the morn- 
ing. That glad morning will come — the morning 
that will be followed by no night of darkness and 
storm. For it we must wait. For it we can wait 
without mistrust or impatience, knowing that in 
every crisis we may look for the One mighty to 
save to come to us walking upon the sea. No 
night is too dark, no sea too rough, to keep him 
from coming when we need his help and comfort. 



128 



Sunset Views. 



On the Pacific side, did I say? Those early 
years of California history had in them but little 
that was pacific. What a transition for me from 
Georgia to California, from dreamy, even-going 
old Savannah to the newness and rush and roar 
of San Francisco ! The first thing that impressed 
me was that everything and everybody seemed to 
be unsettled. The spirit of 1849 was ^ n the 
air in 1855. Each person seemed to be ready for 
;i a strike" of some sort — to make a strike, or to 
be struck. Scarcely any one seemed to have any 
fixed plans or expectations. The pulse of Cali- 
fornia beat fast and strong, but irregularly. It all 
seemed very strange to me, and it had a sort of 
charm that was indefinable. There was a morbid 
element in that early life in California, and it in- 
duced habits of thought and action that became 
chronic with many. Once a Californian, always 
a Californian, in this sense. The gambling ele- 
ment — the disposition to take chances for the big 
things and the little things that were to be gained 
or lost in the turn of life's wheel of fortune — was 
everywhere pervasive. 

Bishop Andrew presided at the session of the 
Pacific Conference held at Sacramento City, April, 
1855. That fatherly and apostolic saint had an 
heroic vein that ran all through him. When told 
that there was an impression prevailing in some 
quarters that his mission to California was to wind 
up the Southern Methodist Conference and aban- 
don that field, he said, "If that is what is want- 
ed, they sent the wrong man" ; and as he said it 
there was a compression of the lips and a flash in 
his eye that bespoke a true chief of the militant 
Church. Martyr metal was in him: for a princi- 
ple he would have died as a matter of course with- 
out flourish and without fear. He was not in the 



On the Pacific Side. 



129 



least melodramatic. His wife was with him — and 
the echoes of her voice are still heard and the fra- 
grance of her presence still lingers there. Her 
face was an evangel. She was the Methodist Ma- 
donna while she was among the Calif ornians, A 
woman came to see her one day while she and the 
bishop were with us in Sonora, the mining town 
where I did my first preaching in California. This 
woman had a history; she had then two husbands 
living in the same town, and a third elsewhere. 
She was passionate, impulsive, fierce in one mood, 
and pitiful and generous almost beyond belief in an- 
other. She came to bring some little token of good 
will to the parsonage — if that one-roomed board 
shanty on the steep red hillside may be so called — 
and there she met and was introduced to our Ma- 
donna. Lingering, she sat and gazed upon the face 
so restful and benignant, so gentle and so holy in 
its expression — and suddenly, with a gush of irre- 
pressible emotion, she rushed across the room, 
dropped on her knees, hid her face in her lap, and 
sobbed, "Mother!" This woman had been a 
sinner and had been much sinned against, and 
doubtless had longed for the mother-love which is 
so like the love of God. If that woman was not 
converted by that look, she was comforted, and 
must have had at least a momentary glimpse of 
that love divine which is the fountain of all the 
true love that blesses this world. 

My first two }^ears in California were spent in 
the Southern Mines, Sonora being my station — 
with Shaw's Flat, Columbia, Brown's Flat, Whis- 
ky Hill, Yankee Jim's, Mormon Creek, Chinese 
Camp, Jamestown, Poverty Flat, Woods's Creek, 
Jackass Gulch, and some other minor mining 
camp, as my parish. Gold dust, whisky, gam- 
bling, fighting, shooting, and other things of the 
9 



130 



Sunset Views. 



sort, made life lively. The first four funerals that 
I attended told the story of life at the time in the 
mines of California — two of them were suicides, 
and the other two had been murdered. " Bang! 
bang! bang!" we would hear the rapid succes- 
sion of pistol shots in the Long Tom saloon in the 
dead of the night. " Somebody is killed," we 
thought, or said ; and the next morning I would 
be called on to perform the funeral rites of the 
Church over the dead body of some poor fellow 
who had been shot down in that far-famed resort. 
It was run by old Ben Aspinwall — a huge-framed, 
adipose giant, who regarded such tragedies as a 
matter of course; who never became excited, tak- 
ing things as they came; a strange old sinner, who 
would take the last dollar from a miner who bet 
against his faro-bank and as readily count out his 
twenty-dollar gold pieces to help in burying the 
dead or in charity to the living. I mention his 
name here with only a kindly feeling: the old gam- 
bler has for many long years been in some other 
world than this; this posthumous mention will do 
him no hurt. He was a typical man of his class, 
only bigger in body, of steadier nerve, and freer 
of hand than others. All my life I have heard of 
the proverbial generosity of professional gamblers. 
Is it true that they are notable for their generosity ? 
And if so, what is the secret of it? The old 
proverb, " Come easy, go easy," might explain 
it to some minds. But it occurs to me that the ex- 
planation may be found in the devil's casuistry 
suggested to a gambler's soul that if he will divide 
what he wrongfully takes from one man with an- 
other man who is needy, he will thus condone for 
his sin, and get a credit mark in his book of life 
which must be balanced at last. The devil always 
has a lie ready for all who will listen to him. 



On the Pacific Side. 



The life of California at that day was mostly 
young life. Young men ruled and rioted after 
their fashion. They were strong, passionate, 
credulous. Their sins were the sins of inexperi- 
ence and passion in a new country. Their virtues 
were courage and hopefulness. They feared not 
God, man, or devil. They persuaded themselves 
that they were the starters of a new era of some 
sort in their new western world. They scoffed 
at the wisdom of the past, invented a slang all their 
own, and extemporized a moral code for them- 
selves, conspicuously slighting several of the ten 
commandments. They struck out at a wild pace 
for an unknown goal. Mark Twain and Bret 
Harte have painted them to the life as far as they 
went. The names of the public men of California 
who died by the bullet or the bottle would make a 
long roll; but I would not, if I could, call these 
men back from the mystery and sanctity of death. 
The splendid manhood thus eclipsed makes as sad 
a chapter in real life as has been enacted on this 
planet. 



CALIFORNIA AS WE FOUND IT. 



CALIFORNIA AS WE FOUND IT. 



THE Spaniards and the Roman Catholics 
had long held possession of California; but 
manifest destiny was against their owner- 
ship and rulership. Republicanism and 
Protestantism were bound to supplant and 
succeed Imperialism and Romanism in Califor- 
nia. That Romanism was a singular compound of 
strength and weakness. It was saintly and sinful. 
It was heroic, and it was evasive and illusive. 
Grand religious ideals and shameful worldly pol- 
icies were blended in a way that excited mingled 
admiration and execration in ingenuous souls. The 
heroic and the saintly age of Spanish evangelization 
and conquest has registered itself in the very no- 
menclature of California, from San Francisco Bay 
to San Diego. What a saintly country in name! 
But what a devilish history! It is a mixture, and 
an evil mixture — the Church and the State. The 
kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this world 
— God and mammon — left their marks. The Jes- 
uit fathers were of two sorts — the devotees who be- 
lieved with all their hearts, and the diplomats w T ho 
schemed with all their cunning; the propagandists 
of the faith, and the tools of the Spanish political 
conquest. The writer who ignores the one or the 
other of these elements, in his estimates of the 
forces that operated in the Spanish settlements of 
America, will give a narrow, one-sided, and mis- 
leading statement. 

The "Society of Jesus " on its religious side 
exhibited much that was worthy of its name — self- 
sacrifice, courage, consecration, enthusiasm, that 
dared danger and death for love of their Lord and 
love of souls. On its other and darker side, its 

(135) 



136 



Sunset Views. 



human side, it reflected the meanest, darkest, foul- 
est, cruelest phases of the corrupt and bloody po- 
litical governments of that time. ^he review of 
this history should burn into our souls the truth 
taught us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, that 
his kingdom is not of this world. The union of 
Church and State is an unnatural union. It dis- 
organizes the State and corrupts the Church. The 
history of the world has furnished no exception 
to the truth of this statement. The disorgani- 
zation on the one hand, and the corruption on 
the other, have been measured by the extent to 
which this mesalliance has been carried. The 
abolition of the temporal power of the papacy did 
not come a day too soon for all concerned. The 
Methodist movement in Great Britain saved Prot- 
estant Christianity from the ruin with which it was 
threatened by its alliance with the State. The 
Greek Church has this fatal flaw. Lutheranism 
also has it. This Roman leaven must be cast out — 
and it will be. The unification of the Church will 
come by the separation from the State of all its 
branches, and their streams flowing into the one 
sea of love whose tides shall sweep away all di- 
visions among the followers of the divine, risen, 
reigning Christ. 

In California I knew men and women of the 
Roman Catholic Church whose nobility and sweet- 
ness of Christian character equaled the best among 
the multitudes of the noble and the good I have 
known among Protestants. If I get to heaven 
and fail to meet them there, it will be a great sur- 
prise and disappointment to me. I love all alike 
who truly bear the image of my Lord. My wish 
and prayer for the elimination of all bigotry and 
exclusiveness arise not from any lack of love for 
those from whom I am separated. It is because I 



California as We Found It. 



137 



do love them that I want the barbed wire fences 
removed. 

The Sunday bull fight was a California insti- 
tution long after I became a citizen of the state. 
I never saw one — and never wanted to. Its bru- 
tality ought to have disgusted even the Digger In- 
dians. It has often been described as a cowardly 
sport, but the man who could thus take the chances 
of impalement or of being ripped up by a tortured 
animal, and brave the righteous wrath of a mercy- 
loving God, exhibited a quality that was not heroic 
in any honorable sense of the word, but had in it 
a cruelty that was devilishly daring. A bull fight 
on a religious holiday tells the story of the Cali- 
fornia of that curious Spanish semi-civilization, 
with one part of Christian faith and many parts 
of many things utterly unlike it. The roots of 
that one thing that was good will remain; the 
evils, having in themselves the germs of dissolu- 
tion because they are evils, will pass away. The 
bull fight will be read of in a future age with dis- 
gust mingled with incredulity; the religious holi- 
day will be more and more what its name implies 
to the devout and cultured mind. To the credit of 
their religious teachers let it be said that the early 
Californians had the sentiment of reverence left in 
their souls. At the same time truth compels the 
admission that they were very weak and low in 
practical morality. The first gold-seekers did not 
make things better. Many of them left their 
regard for the ten commandments behind them 
when they started to the gold fields. When a new- 
comer expressed astonishment or indignation at the 
grosser exhibitions of vice, 66 You forget that you 
are in California/' an earlier immigrant would say 
with a smile of pity on his face. The multitude 
were doing evil, and it was easy to run with them. 



THOSE EARLY CALIFORNIANS. 



THOSE EARLY CALIFORNIANS. 



THOUGH I was in California twenty-three 
years, my surprise never wore off. The 
natural features of the country itself, its 
seasons, its productions, its institutions, 
its people, were new at the start, and gave 
fresh surprises to the last. The life was so pecul- 
iar and so intense that a new-comer was quickly 
naturalized if he could only speak any sort of Eng- 
lish. Many sorts of English were spoken, from the 
best to the worst. The precise and pedantic Eng- 
lish of the educated New Englander, and the nasal 
drawl and verbal sinuosities and queer provincial- 
isms of the unlettered or partially educated NewEn- 
glander; the elegant diction of the most cultured 
Southerner, the ludicrous imitations of a class of 
pretenders who aped them, and the marvelous 
grammatical twists and mirth-provoking phases of 
the illiterate man from the South; the rugged and 
picturesque dialect of the Westerner who had 
lived close to nature and whose ideas and vocabu- 
lary were well matched in directness and vividness 
of coloring; the educated Irishman who spoke 
the best English, and the uneducated Irishman who 
spoke the funniest and most original; the educated 
Englishman who had every word in its place 
rightly pronounced, and the Englishman to whom 
the eighth letter of the alphabet was a perpetual 
puzzle in its relation to vowel sounds; the Ger- 
man, Frenchman, Dutchman, Italian, Spaniard, 
Scandinavian, Russian, and all the rest, whose 
English, varying in quantity and quality, revealed 
their nativity and indicated how long they had been 

(H 1 ) 



142 



Sunset Views. 



under our stars and stripes. Bishop Pierce hit it 
when he said, "California is a jumble." It was 
a strange mixture — a little of ail the world in con- 
tact, but not in cohesion. There was constant 
effervescence and startling explosions among these 
Calif ornians gathered from everywhere, and with 
so many different ways of thinking, speaking, and 
doing. There was a charm about it that never 
was lost — the charm of novelty. Individuality was 
marked. Conventionality had been left behind. 
The Calif ornian was, to an extent scarcely con- 
ceivable in older communities, a law unto himself 
— and herself, I might add, for the early California 
women, though fewer in number, were not less 
notable than the men for their originality. Some 
of them, thrown on their own resources, developed 
astonishing energy and capacity for self-support 
on right womanly lines; others exhibited aptitude 
for badness and descended hellward with a ve- 
locity that was awful. When a woman does start 
down, down she goes ! Everybody expects it, 
and very many are ready to facilitate her descent. 
The best women are better than the best men, 
speaking in a general way. The worst women, if 
not really worse than the worst men, are more 
hopeless. Hopelessness makes recklessness. God 
pity the man or woman who helps to shut all the 
doors of hope against any sinning, suffering soul! 

The tragedies that came to my knowledge in Cal- 
ifornia prove that there is a personal devil, or that 
there are malign agencies that bring to pass all the 
evil ascribed to Satan in the Holy Scriptures. A 
personal devil — why did God permit him to come 
into being? Why does not God kill him? These 
questions, asked alike by the little child in its sim- 
plicity and by the thought-weary philosopher in 
his despair, have had many answers — some impious 



Those Early Calif ornians. 143 

and flippant, some reckless and despairing. We 
do know that the evil is here. We do know that an 
evil effect must have an evil cause. And so we are 
driven by the logic of facts to accept the saying 
of Jesus: An enemy hath done this. There is no 
use in caviling and quibbling. Moral freedom is a 
fact. Moral freedom abused brings suffering here 
in this world where we can see and feel it. When 
the pitying Christ himself tells us that, persisted 
in, evil volition will carry its curse into the next 
world beyond, why should we doubt ? Universalism 
makes an ingenious appeal to sentiment, but the 
text of the Book and the obvious trend of all that 
is in sight now are against it. Is this a digression? 
Not much. A glance at the worst of this life sug- 
gests a query concerning the possibilities beyond. 
If I am digressing, I will digress a little farther, 
by quoting for the reader the words: Behold ', novj 
is the accefted time; behold \ now is the day of sal- 
vation. Now we can be saved. This ought to 
satisfy us now. Fuller light hereafter is part of 
the salvation promised. We can wait for it thank- 
fully and patiently. 

It was surprising to find that almost everything 
in California was in dispute. A lawsuit or a shoot- 
ing scrape was had over almost every mining claim 
or land grant. The hottest election campaigns in 
the older states were but child's play in compari- 
son with such contests in early California. ( Every- 
body else in America save an old Californian will 
be excused for doubting this.) Oratory, treating, 
' ' still-hunting," mass meetings, street processions, 
personal encounters in newspaper controversy and 
with fists, knives, and pistols, made running for 
office a lively experience in those early days of 
California. The almost incredible bullying and 
terrorism of the San Francisco roughs surprised 



i 4 4 



Sunset Views. 



and for awhile paralyzed the city. The uprising 
and vengeance of the Vigilance Committee aston- 
ished, electrified all concerned. The gold fever 
somehow gave a feverish diathesis to everything 
in California. That fever burns on yet. The red- 
hot California of 1855 ' ls a slowly cooling but not 
cold cinder in 1898. The ashes smolder in many 
hearts that were then swept by the firesof passion, 
that never burned more fiercely this side of perdi- 
tion. 

The truly good were also surprisingly good in 
the California of that time. Negative goodness 
was good for nothing then and there. The timid 
fled, the half-hearted went back and walked no 
more with their Lord. If there was a weak spot 
in any professed Christian's belief, it was revealed; 
if there was a flaw in his character, it broke down 
at that point. Early California was strewn thick 
with moral wrecks. But those who were true were 
the truest of the true disciples of Jesus. Those who 
stood those fires heated seven-fold came forth re- 
fined of dross and shining in the beauty of holiness. 
Never for a day was I out of sight and touch with 
some of these faithful ones. There was Drury K. 
Bond, a miner at Sonora, whose sunny, friendly face 
reflected a soul as guileless as a child's; who moved- 
amid the fires of sin that raged around him, un- 
scorched; whose look, tone, and everyday walk 
were so Christlike as to disarm the criticism of the 
most cynical and skeptical, and fortify the faith 
of all who had faith. He became a preacher, 
spent a few years in the work of the ministry, do- 
ing good in a quiet, blessed way all his own — and 
then went home to God. There were other mi- 
ners like him in the California mines in that early 
time, lights shining in dark places. Then there / 
was Judge David O. Shattuck, of San Francisco — 



Those Early Calif ornians. 



that surprising compound of legal wisdom, social 
simplicity, and Methodistic strength and fervor. 
His apostolic presence bespoke his goodness, a 
goodness that none could question; his judicial 
decisions were the terror of tricky lawyers and the 
joy of the common people; his sermons— he was 
a local preacher — were models of clear exegesis, 
pointed application, and fatherly tenderness. He 
was a marvel to all who knew him—wise as a ser- 
pent, harmless as a dove, in the sense in which 
the words were used by the Master in whose steps 
he walked. Here they come trooping before my 
mental vision, but here I must close this chapter. 
10 



SOME PREACHERS. 



SOME PREACHERS. 

TO hear Dr. Eustace Speer preach was like 
listening to a music box that played the 
tunes that were liveliest and sweetest, and 
left you wishing for more when it ceased. 
He never toyed with his subject, as the 
manner of some is. His sermons had no " intro- 
ductions." With the first sentence he grasped his 
theme by the proper handle, and held it firmly 
to the last. Though a very rapid speaker, every 
word was well chosen and in its right place. The 
effect of his discourse was cumulative. When he 
stopped, the hearer had a homiletic picture vivid 
and symmetrical photographed in memory. The 
doctrine he preached had the old-time Georgia 
Methodist quality of straightedgedness. He did 
not refine, symbolize, or explain away the texts 
that reveal the God of the Bible as hating sin and 
loving holiness; he did not joke about hell-fire, 
as if it were only painted fire ; he did not confound 
the guilt of willful sin against God with the euphe- 
mistic phrases now used by many who preach a 
gospel of progress, so called — but progress back- 
ward toward a theology that makes a God of straw 
and ethics that make one thing about as good as 
another; the namby-pamby gospel of the babblers 
who have invented a new terminology for their 
new religion, which is no religion at all. Dr. 
Speer could make the foolishness of sin look very 
foolish indeed. The sophistry of sin he could 
reveal with logical flashes that went through it like 
X-rays. His satire burned the proud flesh of the 
unrenewed and the unrepentant like caustic. His 

(H9) 



Sunset Views. 



wit, sparingly used in the pulpit, had a flavor like 
that of Dr. South, who impaled error on epigram- 
matic points. He used quotation with rare felicity : 
his quotations were diamonds set in gold. At Mul- 
berry vStreet Church in Macon, Ga., one Sunda}-, 
in a discourse of exquisite beauty and tenderness, 
he quoted from " The Pilgrim's Progress " the de- 
scription of Standfast at the crossing of the Jordan, 
and he did it in a style so graphic that the impres- 
sion remains with me undimmed to this moment. 
His short prayer-meeting talks, expository and hor- 
tatory, stirring and brief, were models. I never 
heard from him a dull sermon, nor attended a 
dull service led by him. He had the social gift: he 
seemed to know everybody, and drew everybody 
to him by sympathetic attraction. And by the 
true pastoral instinct he found his way to the 
places where there were sorrow and pain. His 
presence was gracious and exhilarating, if I may 
so describe it. About five feet ten inches in height, 
"raw-boned," rather large-limbed, with uneven 
features, aquiline nose, and bright brown, express- 
ive eyes, with light-brown hair covering a noble 
head firmly set on his broad shoulders — a genius 
in the pulpit, and akin to every soul he met outside 
of it: this is Dr. Speer as he appears to me after 
the lapse of the many years that have come and 
gone since I sat under his ministry — a privilege 
for w T hich I shall never cease to be thankful. 

Dr. Whitefoord Smith was the most popular 
preacher in Columbia, the capital city of South 
Carolina, when I first knew him. He was a high- 
flyer whose wing was stead}^, and whose eye was 
fixed on the sun — a gray eagle of the pulpit. His 
descriptive powers were remarkable : what he saw 
he made his hearers see. He possessed the en- 
thusiasm that gave his subject possession of himself 



Some Preachers. 



for the time being. What he felt his hearers felt : he 
had the sincerity of conviction and intensity of feel- 
ing that made the facts of the gospel and the experi- 
ences of religion tremendously true. His hearers 
caught his enthusiasm, and were borne with him on 
the high tide of his magnificent pulpit orator}'. As 
a declaimer, he was brilliant and fascinating to all 
classes of persons. The sweep of his gesture suit- 
ed the sweep of his rhetoric. It was spread-eagle 
style, but in no derogatory sense of the word: the 
king-bird of the air is never mistaken for any 
other genus. ;< Let us go to-night, and hear 
Whitefoord Smith/' said the blase man of the 
world, who wanted a fresh luxury of some sort: 
the woman of fashion, who liked to go with the 
crowd : the student of human nature, who took de- 
light in analyzing the elements of his pulpit power: 
the schoolboy and schoolgirl, who gloried in pul- 
pit pyrotechnics and poetry: the old-time Metho- 
dists, who believed in a judgment day and a New 
Jerusalem with its golden streets and rainbow 
arching the great white throne on which sat the 
King of glorv — all these flocked to hear Dr. 
Smith, and all were profited more or less as well 
as pleased. The Church was edified under his 
ministry, for through all his cloth-of-golden pulpit 
oratory ran the scarlet thread of the doctrine of the 
cross. He built upon the sure foundation— Christ 
Jesus, the wisdom of God and the power of God. 
He reached the masses and drew them, Christward 
— this pulpit light who soared and shone, a star of 
the first magnitude in the heavens. 

Dr. R. T. Xabors left a memory with us as flaw- 
less as a crystal. No one ever heard him preach 
without falling in love with both the preacher and 
his gospel. The graciousness of his message was 
equaled by the grace of its delivery. The frailty 



Sunset Views. 



of his body marked him for early translation to the 
higher sphere whose airs he inhaled in holy com- 
munion with his Lord, and lent a pathos to his 
ministry that none could resist. Your first thought 
when you saw him enter the pulpit was that there 
was a man suited to bring us a message from the 
world of spirits : he was himself more spiritual than 
earthfy, as he stood there before the people— a man 
not above medium stature, notably gentle and grace- 
ful in bearing, his palid face ashine from an inner 
light, his thin frame clad in faultless black, his 
features feminine in their fine delicacy, reflecting 
every changing phase of thought and feeling in his 
discourse, and withal an aroma of heaveniy-mind- 
edness that filled the house of God with its fra- 
grance, He was a living epistle, known and read 
of all who came within the range of his ministry. 
A finer touch than mine would be required to de- 
scribe his preaching. The usual descriptives seem 
coarse and awkward when applied to Nabors. 
When he was brought to Nashville and stationed 
at West End, near Vanderbilt University, one 
object had in view was to give the students of 
that institution an object lesson in saintliness — 
saintliness without sanctimony, saintliness with- 
out sentimentality or softness, the saintliness of 
a manly nature touched and transfigured by the 
touch of the Master. He was what is called by 
some a flowery preacher, but only in a good 
sense. There was in his soul a love of beauty that 
led to an inevitable efflorescence in his speech. 
His flowers were never artificial; they had both 
the bloom and the fragrance of living plants grow- 
ing in the garden of the Lord. The lilies of the 
valley graced the garlands he wreathed for the 
brow of the King; the rose of Sharon with him, 
as in the Song of Songs, the queen of all. He 



Some Preachers. 



iS3 



was so attuned to the diviner harmonies that his 
sermons were truth set to music. The crucified, 
risen, reigning, interceding Christ was his one 
theme of discourse. The refrain of the Corona- 
tion Hymn was the keynote of his preaching: to 
crown him Lord of all was the aim of his ministry 
and the inspiration of his eloquence. The vener- 
able chancellor of the university sat enthralled by 
his genius and uplifted by his touch, while the lit- 
tle children looked and listened with a pleasure 
and wonder they did not understand, but felt that 
it was easier for them to love the Christ preached 
to them by this disciple who lived so close to him 
and had so much of his spirit. 

George Sim, an undersized Englishman of few 
words, was a gold miner in one of the mining 
camps of northern California. One night, ar- 
rayed in his mining apparel, a red flannel shirt and 
corduroy breeches, he sat among the hearers in 
the rear of the little chapel on the hillside. The 
preacher was filled with the Spirit, and the sermon 
shot an arrow of conviction to the heart of the 
grave and taciturn little Englishman. Conviction 
was speedily followed by conversion, and his con- 
version by a call to preach. The reader will see 
that language of certainty is used in this brief nar- 
ration. He gave every evidence that his convic- 
tion was genuine and his conversion clear. One 
of the surest evidences of his call to preach was in 
the fact that he could preach. A man who can- 
not preach is not called to that function, though 
some good men have seemed to think otherwise. 
The first time I ever heard him, and every time 
thereafter, I had a surprise. His sermons, reported 
verbatim et literatim , would have graced any first- 
class homiletic magazine of our day. There was 
a finish about them very remarkable : the unity of 



154 



Sunset Views. 



the parts, the severe sententiousness of the style, 
the closeness of the logic — in a word, the polemic 
vigor and literary beauty of his sermons were ex- 
traordinary. I never heard from his lips a dis- 
course which would not have borne the test of 
the printer's ink. Of how many living preachers 
could this be truthfully said? His preaching was 
simplicity and directness in perfection, the undi- 
luted gospel in the fewest words, mostly Anglo- 
Saxon monosyllables like his text-book, the Eng- 
lish Bible, which he quoted with special frequency 
and felicity. He knew that English Bible : he was 
saturated with it; its thought had interpenetrated 
his thought, its spirit had flooded his spirit. He 
had little gesture of any sort, was sparing in illus- 
tration or anecdote, and never uttered a joke in 
the pulpit. He simply preached the gospel, and 
nothing but the gospel, in its plainest terms and 
fewest words- — not with enticing words of man's 
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of 
power. That blessed demonstration attended his 
ministry from first to last. Souls that were hun- 
gry for the word of life were eager to be fed by 
him — cultured men and women who knew the 
difference between the simple beauty of the truth 
that is the highest beauty of the universe and the 
meretricious beribboning and bespangling of it by 
bunglers and babblers. " Where did he get all 
he knows?" was asked by a scholarly man after 
meeting Sim socially. He seemed to have read 
more widely than other men with far larger oppor- 
tunity: the treasures of history, science, art, phi- 
losophy, and general literature, in the truest and 
largest meaning of the word, were at his command. 
No rubbish cumbered his capacious brain, and the 
glorious gospel of the grace of God filled all the 
needs of his soul. He knew it to be clothed with 



Some Preachers. 



155 



a power all its own. He felt that power in his own 
heart, and as preached by him it was felt by many 
who will be glad forever that they sat under his 
ministry. 

Another name comes in here — that of Robert 
W. Bigham, who died at Demorest, Georgia, Oc- 
tober 11, 1900. He was my presiding elder in the 
California mines in 1856. "Bob" Bigham, his 
old Georgia comrades fondly called him in his 
younger days. The abbreviation was expressive 
of the affectionate familiarity that lent its special 
charm to the inner circles of clerical friendship. 
He came of good old Georgia stock, and was mold- 
ed by Georgia Methodism when it was at the height 
of its militancy and fervor. He was an uneven 
preacher: at his best his sermons were massive 
and symmetrical homiletical structures. His great- 
est failures suggested more than some noisier men 
ever say in the pulpit. He was a faithful servant 
of God. He was a true friend. ' 6 Fitzgerald," he 
said to me one day in his brotherly way, "you 
have a dangerous gift, the gift of popularity." His 
kindly heart may have led him to exaggerate the 
measure of good will felt for me by those early Cal- 
ifornians, but his admonition was timely for any 
young preacher. He was fearless and guileless. 
In a contest he never thought of making any con- 
cessions where any righteous principle or policy 
was involved, and was incapable of evasion. He 
was the soul of Christian chivalry in the truest, 
loftiest sense of the word. Our paths parted. I 
am glad that I knew him. 



FIVE FATHERS OF GEORGIA METHODISM. 



FIVE FATHERS OF GEORGIA METHODISM. 

THE Indian fighter, the hunter, and the cir- 
cuit rider were taking possession of the 
land. The rifle, the ax, and the saddle- 
bags held sway. Daniel Boone and Fran- 
cis Asbury typed the manhood of the time. 
The men then called of God to preach were men 
who feared not any face of clay. Only men of 
strongest mold and fearless soul could have got- 
ten a hearing. The weakly bookish and oth- 
erwise weakly pulpit peddler of theological Per- 
hapses, such as are now seen and heard in some 
places, would then have been ignored or laughed 
at. The people had no time to waste on idle or 
merely curious speculations. They gave a hear- 
ing only to men who brought them an earnest 
message in the present tense. Those old Georgia 
preachers were converted sinners who knew how 
to preach to sinners. They believed in total de- 
pravity and full salvation ; many of them claimed 
that they knew both experimentally . These preach- 
ers were the product of their times by the grace of 
God. We shall not look upon their like again. 
Men as great and as good may appear when they 
are wanted, but they will be men of a different 
type. Their chief characteristic was robustness. 
Georgia Methodism as it is now is their work. 
The names mentioned in this chapter represent 
their generation. These men — Samuel Anthony, 
James E. Evans, William J. Parks, John W. Glenn, 
and William Arnold — will sit for the picture, in 
the background of which are the thousands they 
led, the Georgia Methodism which is so largely 
the fruit of their labors. 

(159) 



i6o 



Sunset Views. 



Samuel Anthony was my pastor at the old Mulber- 
ry Street Church in Macon when I first knew him. 
The mention of his name brings up memories that 
are vivid and sacred. In no other man have I ever 
seen such a blending of sternness and tenderness. 
While denouncing worldliness in the Church or 
threatening impenitent sinners with the wrath of 
a sin-hating God, his tall form seemed to rise to 
a loftier stature, and his voice rang out like the 
peal of a super-terrestrial trumpet. The hearer 
felt that he was listening to judgment-day thun- 
der, and could almost see the flash of its lightnings. 
In expostulation with hard-hearted sinners, and in 
pleading with backsliders to come back to the path 
of duty from which they had strayed, there was an 
awfulness in his pathos that cannot be put on pa- 
per. " It has been said that only a mother knows 
the heart of a mother," he said one day while 
making one of these appeals. " Only a mother 
knows the heart of a mother, and only a pastor 
knows the heart of a pastor" — and his frame 
quivered with irrepressible emotion as he spoke. 
There was a quaking and melting that day in the 
great congregation. The man of God felt the 
pangs of soul-travail, and a mighty revival came to 
the birth. He was a true pastor who watched for 
souls as one that must give account. Was he elo- 
quent? He was more than eloquent: he was sur- 
charged with a power that went beyond any de- 
scribable effects of tone or gesture in human 
speech. When the pulpit glow was on his strong, 
rugged face, it shone like the sunlit face of a gran- 
ite cliff. In his impassioned appeals the tones of 
his voice mellowed into sweetness and fell into the 
rhythmical flow that seems to be the natural ex- 
pression of human thought and emotion when at 
full tide. Six feet and three or four inches in 



Five Fathers of Geoi'gia Methodism. 161 



height, long-limbed and large-boned, with uneven 
features and particularly high cheek bones, deep- 
set blue eyes under heavy, dark eyebrows, with a 
complexion that spoke of fresh air and temperate 
living — this is the man as he now comes up before 
my mind. I humbly thank God that I ever met 
him and sat under his ministry. 

John W. Glenn was my first presiding elder. He 
was a presiding elder w r ho presided : he was a lead- 
er who led. He was a rugged sage who saw men 
and things in the dry light of real facts, and who 
acted upon the facts as he saw them with almost 
mathematical certainty. He knew nothing of eva- 
sion or irresolution. There were to him only two 
sides to any question — the right side and the 
wrong side. He marshaled his Church forces like 
a true general who knew w r hat ought to be done, 
and calculated to a fraction the resources at his 
command. He planned w r isely, and then moved 
boldly — as Von Moltke phrased it. "he pon- 
dered well, and then dared." The Church moved 
forward under his leadership. The stragglers 
were disciplined and made to keep step, or were 
drummed out of camp. He was a true disciplin- 
arian: that is to say, he knew the law of the 
Church by heart, and enforced it to the letter. 
The paternal element was conjoined with the au- 
tocratic in his make-up. To me, a young preach- 
er with everything to learn, he was patient and 
faithful in his dealing. His outburst of opposition 
to my going to California almost electrified me. It 
is plain enough to me now that he saw r farther and 
more clearly than some others who then had the 
ear of the Church. As a preacher the substance 
of his message w T as : Obey the gospel, do your 
duty now as God commands, and receive his bless- 
ing; disobey or delay at the peril of your soul, 
1 1 



162 



Sunset Views. 



He spoke as one having authority, as the accred- 
ited minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, called, com- 
missioned, and equipped for the work committed 
unto him. The pleasure of the Lord prospered in 
his hand. He never took a backward step as a lead- 
er. He never cheapened the terms of membership 
in the Church to accommodate or conciliate the 
half-hearted. He did not use sedatives where caus- 
tic was needed in dealing with diseased members of 
the ecclesiastical body. His faithful ministry re- 
sulted in the awakening and reclamation of many 
souls, while it conserved the purity and power of 
the Church. Standing on his sturdy limbs, ro- 
bust of frame, with a leonine head massive and 
bushy-haired, with a face whose features expressed 
transparent honesty and courageous forcefulness, 
the figure of John W. Glenn will hold its place 
among the men who led Georgia Methodism in the 
days of its highest militancy. 

James E. Evans was the weeping prophet in his 
day, a man who could preach and sing and pray 
with an intensity of feeling and a sustained energy 
that were little short of the miraculous. The dom- 
inant note of his preaching was its fervidness. 
His soul was on fire, and he kindled a holy con- 
flagration wherever he went. Charles Wesley's 
hymns as sung by him seemed to catch an added 
glow and a more thrilling power. He could preach 
three sermons a day, lead the singing at every 
sendee, exhort mightily, and make intercessory 
prayers that seemed to lift penitent souls for whom 
he prayed into the very arms of the pitying Christ. 
Those sermons, exhortations, songs, and prayers 
are echoing in living hearts to-day; they set in 
motion tides of gracious influence that will break 
upon the shore of eternity. He was a marked 
exception to the rule that the revivalist and the 



Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism. 163 

Church financier are not to be looked for in the 
same person. He had a double vocation as preach- 
er, church-builder, and debt-raiser. His great 
physical stature, his personal magnetism, the mel- 
ody of his voice, and his versatility in social gifts 
marked him for leadership in the Church. He was 
a faithful steward of the manifold grace of God. 
His tread was that of a giant. Georgia Metho- 
dism will bear the impress of his genius as long as 
the waters of the Ocmulgee sing their way to the 
sea. 

The one word that comes to my pen point in de- 
scribing William J. Parks is "aggressiveness." He 
pushed to his logical conclusions over all sophis- 
tries and suppressions. He pushed his way to de- 
sired results over all opposers. He was the auto- 
crat of debate: the most eloquent orators and the 
most subtle special pleaders went down before the 
onset of this man, who always seemed to know all 
the facts involved in a discussion and to be able to 
set them forth in the fewest and most forcible 
words. There was no confusion in his thought, 
no waste in his verbiage. He was in himself a 
Conference majority in most cases by the mere 
force of his parliamentary genius. In a legislative 
body where he could have found full play for his 
powers he would have ranked with the first men 
of his time. He was as an oracle for wisdom 
among his compeers, and had a permanent follow- 
ing among the masses accorded only to men who 
are born to lead. His sermons were like shots 
from a rifled gun before which nothing could 
stand. He could impale an error or expose a fal- 
lacy in a single sentence that struck to the heart 
and stuck to the memory. He was deliberation 
personified. His sayings were quoted far and 
wide; "Uncle" Billy Parks, as the people fondly 



164 



Sunset Views. 



called mm, thus furnished ammunition for multi- 
tudes of Methodists in their polemic warfare, and 
in their conflict with the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. His character and his work are as solid 
and enduring as the strength-girded Stone Moun- 
tain upon which the storms have beaten from cen- 
tury to century and left no scar. 

William Arnold was unique among his contem- 
poraries. He stood alone as the delineator of the 
lives of the saints and painter of the glories of heav- 
en. Far and near he was sent for to preach funeral 
sermons for the old and the young, the rich and the 
poor alike. With his long white hair, serene, rud- 
dy face, soul-lit blue eyes, and apostolic presence, 
he seemed to belong to the spiritual world of which 
it was his delight to preach to the rapt and tearful 
multitudes that sat under his ministry. To look 
upon him and hear him made it easy to believe in 
the truths he proclaimed and to love the Christ 
whose image he bore. He was a living demonstra- 
tion of the power of the gospel to lift men above 
the plane of nature — a walking embodiment of 
that spiritually-mindedness which is life and peace. 
When he stood in the pulpit, with his silver locks 
falling around his temples, his rapt face aglow with 
the holy flame that burned within his soul, it seemed 
to the lookers-on that in him the two worlds met. 
Death, the resurrection, and the joys of the re- 
deemed were his themes — especially the joys of 
the glorified saints. The best hymns that bore on 
these subjects he quoted with wonderful fluency 
and appositeness : many of his funeral sermons 
were hymnological mosaics, sparkling in more than 
poetic beauty. The popular impression was that 
he improvised much of the verse he uttered: it 
came from his heart with a spontaneity and unctu- 
ousness that seemed like inspiration rather than 



Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism. 165 

memory. The listening saints fell in love with the 
heaven of which he preached and sang, renewed 
their vows, and quickened their steps thitherward. 
The mourners looked up through their tears and 
took comfort. At times a mighty afflatus would 
descend upon the man of God and upon the wait- 
ing assembly, and preacher and people were swept 
away upon mighty tides of emotion that could no 
more be checked than the roll of the ocean at its 
flood. Nobody wished to check the mighty and 
solemn joy. It came because the channels were 
open; they let it flow in unhindered, and praised 
God for a present salvation and a hope that was 
full of glory. Uncramped by conventionalities, 
and unused to repression of opinion or feeling, 
they could not help shouting. It is almost certain 
that they did not try to help it. It did not hurt 
them. Their joy was full, and they gave it vent 
in their own way. The voices of the white-haired 
preacher and most of those old shouting Georgia 
Methodists have long since joined in the hallelu- 
iahs of the glorified hosts in the city of God. The 
echoes will never cease among their spiritual chil- 
dren so long as there is a Methodist home or a 
Methodist altar in Georgia. 



THE OLD PANEL 



THE OLD PANEL. 

THEY were of the race of the Colossi — 
those bishops of the old panel of Southern 
Methodists. There was not a runt nor a 
weakling among them. They differed one 
from another as widely as good men could 
differ. They were not all equally great, but each 
was a genius in his own way. Men as great as 
they, and even greater than some of them, failing 
nowhere save in elections to connectional office, 
lived obscure lives in narrower spheres of service, 
and had no memorial other than the obituary de- 
partment of the Church paper and the mortuary 
register of the Annual Conference. They did not 
live for fame; their record is on high — and that is 
all thev sought. But we have found ourselves ask- 
ing, What would have been the record of certain 
gifted men who were talked of and voted for for 
the episcopacy, had they not died without it ? Who 
knows? Mere officeholding is not fame. To the 
incompetent and unworthv, both in Church and 
State, it has been a pillory rather than a pedestal. 

Joshua Soule stood at the head of the old panel of 
bishops in more senses than one. He was a South- 
ern Methodist from Maine. With half a chance, 
those big-framed men from Maine made excellent 
Southerners. There was a tonic quality in its 
great forests of pine and in its coast breezes that 
gave a bulk, firmness, and fineness to its manhood 
that found responsiveness in the large-framed, lib- 
eral-minded, high-mettled Southerners of the best 
class. Blaine's personal popularity in the South 
was very great; and when he made an anti-climax 

(i6 9 ) 



Sunset Views. 



of his public career, the South was a chief mourner 
at his political grave. That other man from Maine. 
Speaker Reed — Tom Reed. 64 the Czar,*' in news- 
paper lingo — was a social lion among Southern- 
ers in Washington City. These men were weighty, 
warm-blooded, human — not lucky in politics, but 
with a personal following like that of Clay or Jack- 
son. When Joshua Soule refused ordination on 
what many men would have called amere punctilio, 
but what was to him a point of honor, he showed the 
metal of which he was made. He was wrought 
steel, double-refined in the fiery trials that some- 
how come in some form to every man who does 
anything worth doing; in this world. He left noth- 
ing- behind him worth mentioning in the line of 
written or printed thought. He was not a writer, 
nor a dreamer, nor a theorizer. He was a Metho- 
dist preacher who stuck to his vocation, and an 
administrator w r ho administered according to the 
Methodist discipline, with an eve single to duty 
as prescribed by the law of the Church and the 
Head of the Church. But though he left behind 
him no "literary remains,'' he did bequeath to the 
Church a legacy rich beyond computation — a life 
without spot or blemish, or any such thing ; an ex- 
ample of subordination of self to duty in the pres- 
ent tense, imperative mood : a nobility of Christian 
manhood that stood every test. He set the fashion, 
so to speak, in his great office. His life is worth 
more to his Church than a library filled with books 
that deal with Christian duty and ethics as ab- 
stractions. Anv man. in the succession to Bishop 
Soule, who should prove to be self-seeking, cow- 
ardly, or small-minded, would furnish a demon- 
stration of invincible natural depravity and sinis- 
ter heredity. Bishop Soule looked the man he 
was: tall and stately, with the gravity of a thinker: 



The Old Panel, 



171 



virile, incisive, reverend, serene, with that impres- 
sion of reserved force peculiar to the grand men 
who possess it; a man among men, and a mighty 
man of God. 

When the famous race horse, " Bascom," was 
announced as the winner on the race track at 
Lexington, Ky., a gigantic Kentuckian, amid the 
cheering of the crowd, exclaimed, " Hurrah for 
Bascom! I'll bet ten thousand dollars that the 
man that colt was named for can beat any other 
man preaching in these United States." He found 
no takers in that crowd. The great preacher was 
at the top of his fame, the man of the hour as a 
pulpit orator. That is what remains of Bascom — 
the tradition of wonderful oratory. ' 4 Bascom can- 
not be described," said Bishop Kavanaugh ; "he 
was simply overwhelming. There was a majesty 
of bearing, a rush of imagery, a vehemence of 
manner, a flow of emotion that could not be an- 
alyzed or described. I loved him," continued 
his lovable and much-loved successor, "for he 
was as absolutely guileless and tender of heart 
as he was transcendent in his intellectual endow- 
ment." Bascom's printed sermons were a disap- 
pointment. The Bascom who thrilled with his 
wonderful oratory the crowds who thronged to 
hear him at our national capital — whose name was 
the synonym for eloquence everywhere among his 
countrymen, drawing the largest congregations and 
eliciting the largest share of contemporaneous ad- 
miration and applause — is looked for in vain in 
these printed sermons. For the most part they 
are magniloquent, turgid, and rickety in structure: 
here and there they have a touch so giant-like in 
its swing and power that the reader recognizes the 
production of genius, though it is genius unhar- 
nessed and half asleep. He was undoubtedly a 



172 



Sunset Views. 



very great preacher; and not only the tradition of 
his wonderful oratory, but the fruit of it, abides. 
He was a man of sorrows. He stands before the 
Church like a mountain peak overtopping the sur- 
rounding hills, its sides draped in the mist, cloud- 
capped, the light breaking through the gloom at the 
sunset. 

The one word that describes Bishop James O. 
Andrew is the word " fatherly ? ' — the sort of father- 
liness that implies not only benignitv, but strength, 
wisdom, forethought, patience. He was a vicari- 
ous sufferer, the storm-center of a tempestuous 
epoch in the history of the Church. It so happened 
that this most fatherly man gave occasion for the 
clash that was bound to come because it was bar- 
gained for in antecedent legislation both in Church 
and State, and was involved in the conjunction of 
conditions that precipitated the long-dreaded yet 
inevitable catastrophe. He was strong enough and 
true enough for the crisis. Pushed to the front of 
the line of battle, he had at his back all the forces 
of his section. It was a sectional fight: the old 
regime and the letter of the constitution were on 
the side of the South, and the drift of events and 
the spirit of the age were with the North. The 
split in the Methodist Episcopal Church was only 
a symptom of a disease, the germs of which were 
injected into the body politic by the framers of our 
government. The first gun in our civil war was 
fired at Philadelphia in 1789, and the last at Ap- 
pomattox in 1865. Yes, the last: whatever may 
be the destiny awaiting this nation in the unknown 
future, it will be met by us as a united people. 
During all those years of strife, neither weakness 
nor acrimony was ever exhibited by Bishop An- 
drew: through it all he bore himself w r ith dignity 
and patience. His face bore the marks of inward 



The Old Panel, 173 

struggle, but he gave no outward sign of the secret 
griefs that he carried only to the Lord who was 
his sun and shield. Full-grown and stalwart, 
forcefulness and friendliness beaming from his 
strong, open face, his thin gray locks falling on 
either side of his noble head, he stands in his lot 
in Church history, a father in Israel who will hold 
his place in the veneration and affection of our 
people so long as they maintain the principles of 
truth and righteousness for which he was a cham- 
pion and in some sense a martyr. 

Standing in close relation to Bishop Andrew, his- 
torically and otherwise, is Bishop Robert Paine. 
Born in North Carolina, trained for his work in 
Alabama, matured and developed in Mississippi, 
and mellowed and sweetened in his wide sphere of 
connectional service and in the school of suffer- 
ing, he did a work for the Church whose value 
cannot be computed this side of the judgment day. 
He was a Southern gentleman of the old school, a 
Christian of the type that built up what is best in 
our civilization, a servant of the Church who was 
faithful to every trust and equal to the heavy re- 
sponsibilities devolved upon him by the suffrages 
of his brethren. To have known him was to pos- 
sess a prophylactic against misanthropy or pessi- 
mistic views as to the ultimate possibilities of hu- 
man nature. As president of a Christian college 
the quality of Christian manhood revealed to his 
pupils in his daily intercourse with them what 
lies beyond all text-book pedagogy: the possibili- 
ty of such an imitation of Christ as kindled within 
them the loftiest aspiration and spurred them to 
the most strenuous endeavor. The only thing of 
essential importance concerning any man, young 
or old, is just this: the quality of his manhood. 
The traditions of Bishop Paine at Lagrange Col- 



i74 



Sunset Views. 



lege remain among us to this day; and the life of 
this land of ours is purer and sweeter because of 
the fact that by word and deed this Christian gen- 
tleman and scholar put his impress upon the souls 
of his students. Bishop Paine was one of the men 
whose very excellences might disparage him in the 
judgment of the superficial. He was so rounded 
in character and in his intellectual make-up that 
the wonder-hunters looked elsewhere for mate- 
rial to satisfy their morbid cravings. The erratic 
genius who is one half crank and the other half 
a nondescript mixture will make more noise and 
oftener get his name into men's mouths and the 
newspapers, but when he dies nothing more is left 
of him than of the meteors that stream across the 
November heavens at night. Men like Bishop 
Paine shine on like the fixed stars. During his 
lifetime he was not accredited with a great num- 
ber of great sermons— sermons of " phenomenal 
brilliancy, profundity, and power," using the ste- 
reotyped phraseology — but his pulpit work was uni- 
formly so lofty that excellence was assumed as a 
matter of course. As a bishop, he formed correct 
judgments of men and things and did what was 
right and wise so habitually that it was only after 
he was disabled from further service that the 
Church began to realize his worth. This man of 
gentle blood, upon whose fine natural stock was 
ingrafted the diviner element of the Christ-life, 
subsided first into graceful superannuation, and 
then went up to be forever with the Lord whom 
he followed so long with loving heart and steady 
steps. 

Bishop John Early was of the virile old Virginia 
clan of that name, a clan whose spinality stands 
all tests. General Jubal Early was one of these: 
he who refused to sign the ordinance of secession 



The Old Panel. 



175 



when Virginia went out of the Union, and also re- 
fused to surrender when the Southern Confedera- 
cy furled its banner at Appomattox. They are a 
self-directing, aggressive, persistent race, hard to 
turn when once started on a chosen line of action. 
To such men neutrality is incomprehensible where 
anything is at stake worth fighting for, and retreat 
or surrender unthinkable while there is one round 
of ammunition left. All the diplomacy Bishop 
Early knew and practiced was the diplomacy of 
the imperative mood on the basis of existing facts. 
As a pastor, he saw what his parishioners ought to 
do and led them to do it. As a presiding elder, he 
planned campaigns of church-building and soul- 
saving and executed them with a celerity and vig- 
or that made the dawdling and timid dizzy. As a 
connectional Book Agent, he exhibited the same 
business qualities. As a preacher, he was simply 
John Early: there was none exactly like him, and 
he left no successor. He had a mighty faith in 
God. He was a phenomenal revivalist. The 
saints rallied to his call, and sinners capitulated. 
He had his own way of doing things. " Touch 
her if you dare! " he said to an irate youth who 
essayed to force his sister from the altar where she 
was kneeling with others during one of his revival 
meetings. The youth did not dare: the tone and 
gesture of the militant elder caused a sudden 
change of purpose. The tender side of Bishop 
Early never left him: he was brother, father, 
friend, helper wherever brotherliness, friendship, 
and helpfulness were needed. When there was a 
fight on hand he was not dodging in the rear, but 
at the front shooting bullets: but he never fired 
under the white flag nor struck an unfair blow. 
He lived to be an old man, and was weary toward 
the end. When his discharge came he was glad. 



i 7 6 



Sunset Views. 



George F. Pierce, a pulpit monarch and master 
of the platform, a genius without eccentricity; 
Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, whose eloquence was a 
demonstration of the supernatural element that is 
imparted to human thought and speech, according 
to the promise of the Lord, whose humor and gen- 
tleness flooded with sunshine all the circles he 
touched in his long and illustrious career; Hol- 
land N. McTyeire, "a leader of men and a lover 
of little children," whose greatness will grow with 
the coming years that will more and more reveal 
the far-reaching wisdom of his plans, the mighti- 
ness of his stroke, and the singleness of his aim: 
David S. Doggett, "the golden-mouthed " ; Enoch 
Marvin, the Missourian, whose career shows how 
the divine touch transfigures whomsoever receives 
it, who stirred the hearts of the multitudes that 
hung upon his lips as he preached a full gospel 
from a soul fully baptized with the Holy Ghost 
sent down from heaven ; William Capers, the apos- 
tle of negro evangelization in the South, a man 
who in the social circle and everywhere exhibited 
the polish of genuine culture, and in the pulpit 
flamed with the true pentecostal glory; Linus 
Parker, whose life was an evangelical poem, who 
wrote editorials noted alike for classic beauty 
and spiritual insight, whose sermons were flawless 
homiletic crystals — all these belonged to the old 
panel, but as I have made larger mention of them 
elsewhere, this glance will suffice here. 



A MIDWINTER MEDITATION. 



12 



A MIDWINTER MEDITATION. 



STEADY, steady! Today. January 23. 
1900. the suggestion comes to me that the 
work of my life is done. The questions 
that arise in my mind are searching, the 
feelings aroused are unspeakably solemn. 
The work of my life — what has been its prime mo- 
tive and inspiration? Have I built upon the true 
foundation? The words of the apostle Paul in the 
third chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians 
speak to mv inner ear: ' 6 Other foundation can no 
man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 
Xow if any man build upon this foundation gold, 
silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every 
man's work shall be made manifest: for the da^ 
shall declare it. because it shall be revealed by fire ; 
and the fire shall try every man's work of whal 
sort it is.*' 

Steady ! We all know that the last stroke must 
come some day. But to me this has hitherto al- 
wavs seemed a far-off possibility. I sit and face 
the issue, knowing that here is a blessing for me if 
I have faith to grasp it. 

Steady! The richest blessing that can come to 
me is to make God's will my will in all things at 
all times. The habitudes of my life have been 
such as to make this test a test indeed. 

Softly! The blessing is here. The thought 
comes to me to-day, not for the first time, that by 
the gracious law of compensation that seems to run 
through all the divine administration as far as we 
can trace its operation, the very excess of pain 
blunts its edge: the very extremity of weakness 

(i79) 



i8o Sunset Views. 

tempers the consciousness of it. Thus thinking, I 
open a book lying on my table — "The Pilgrim's 
Progress" — and read John Bunyan's account of 
Mr. Standfast's crossing the Jordan at a time 
"when there was a great calm in the river ?? — and 
it seems to me that if I should be called to go over 
to-day there would be no storm upon its banks. 
Thy will be done, O God ! The foundation stand- 
eth sure. 



A LITTLE NOTE. 

I was tempted by my love of the men, and from 
force of habit long indulged, to give in these pages 
a brief sketch of each and all of my colleagues in 
the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South. But I forbear — saying only this 
word from the depths of my heart : The longer and 
more fullv I have known them — each and all — the 
more absolute has been my confidence in them and 
love for them. Their brotherly kindness to me 
has been unvarying and unstinted. 

O. P. Fitzgerald. 



PART II. 



The Platform. 



DREAMS. 



"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; 

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard: 

Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." 

— Browning. 



DREAMS. 



[From a Commencement Address to Young Ladies.] 

YOU expect from me to-day, young ladies of 
the graduating class, much sober counsel, 
full of wisdom — original or second-hand. 
It is difficult on such an occasion as this , with 
such surroundings, to avoid being oracular, 
or to withhold cheap advice and gushing platitudes. 
But I suspect your thought is, that you have had 
enough of the sober realities of life for some time 
past. And I am sure -that you will meet enough 
of inevitable realities in the course of your lives, 
bringing you to that knowledge of many things and 
of yourselves that can come only in one way. — by 
experience. Realities! What are realities? The 
answer would lead us out of our course and into 
water too deep for our soundings. This is an oc- 
casion rather for relaxation, for congratulation, for 
joyful outlook, and for happy daydreams. Ah, if 
! could read all the daydreams that are floating 
through your minds at this moment, and then 
translate them to this audience, this would indeed 
be a lively hour. 

The dream world, after all, is in some sense the 
real world. In it we are near the heart of things 
and farthest from the sphere of conventionalities 
and shams. In the morning of the world God 
made revelations of highest truth to men in dreams. 
The ladder Jacob saw r reaching up into the shining 
depths of heaven was seen in a dream : when he 
awoke he saw only the enveloping night and the si- 
lent stars overhead. In that oldest and wonderful 

(is 5 ) 



i86 



Sunset Views. 



sacred drama, the Book of Job. Elihu tells of rev- 
elations made to him from the spirit-world " in the 
thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep 
sleep falleth on men." That weird and witching 
master of the English tongue. Thomas De Quincev. 
has a passage in his " Confessions of an English 
Opium-eater" — memorized by me while lying on 
my back under the manzinata bushes on a moun- 
tain-top above the beautiful Xapa Valley, in Cali- 
fornia, many years ago: ''The machinery for 
dreaming planted in the human brain was not 
planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance 
with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube 
through which man communicates with the shad- 
owy. And the dreaming organ, in connection 
with the heart, the eve, and the ear. compose the 
magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into 
the chambers of the human brain, and throws dark 
reflections from eternities below all life upon the 
mirrors of the sleeping mind." He might as truly 
have said that in dreams bright reflections from 
eternities above all sensuous life are thrown upon 
the mirrors of the sleeping mind. De Quincev was 
an opium-eater, and was haunted by horrors that 
even his marvelous genius could not adequately 
describe. Here is the deep truth already hinted 
at. namely: That the dream world is a real world. 
Your dreams are reflections both of your physical 
and spiritual nature. Some dreams mean nothing 
more than too much supper — or too little, as the 
case may be. A harmless but extra beefsteak is 
in a dream transformed into a ravening or hideous 
demon: that additional saucer of ice cream be- 
comes in your dream a Stygian river flowing 
through realms infernal. Hungry persons dream 
of eating: the thirsty in their dreams quaff from 
sparkling streams. Even on this lower side of our 



Dreams, 



187 



nature hygienic hints, reproofs, and warnings are 
given us in dreams. 

We proceed a step farther, and affirm that 
dreams have a moral quality. Unmoored in sleep, 
with the hand of the will removed from the rudder 
of the conscious soul, it drifts into its own proper 
current. It would perhaps be too much to say 
that any evil act perpetrated in a dream would be 
possible to the sleeper when aw r ake. Morbid phys- 
ical conditions superinduce morbid mental and 
moral states. The religion of the body, as we all 
know 7 , has much to do with the religion of the 
soul. You cannot dwarf, enfeeble, or debase the 
one without dwarfing, enfeebling, and debasing the 
other. The soul and body are companions for 
this life, and after awhile they will be reunited for 
immortal companionship. They react on each oth- 
er, and rise and fall together. There are truths 
along this line that would make the silliest girl 
living do at least a few minutes' thinking if they 
once happened to strike her mind. I venture to 
say just here, that when a person's dreams habit- 
ually drift into wrong channels, the fact may be 
taken as a sign that the current of that person's 
waking life is flowing in a w T rong direction. The 
thought, the desire, held in check and counter- 
acted by various influences during the w r aking 
hours, in dreams follow 7 the direction of their ac- 
tual inclination. So it may happen that the soul 
that seems to be pure and sweet amid virtuous 
and refining associations in the daytime, in dreams 
during the still and holy hours of night may be 
rioting in scenes of impurity and raging w T ith evil 
passion. It may also come to pass that the soul of 
a true Christian in dreams of the night might be 
invaded by the specters of sin because of heredi- 
tary bias, previous indulgence of evil habit, or 



i88 



Sunset Views. 



possibly demoniac suggestion. Even the holy 
Bishop Ken, in his beautiful " Midnight Hymn," 
which has soothed so many restless pillows, and 
distilled its serene and adoring spirit into so many 
responsive hearts, prayed: 

All loose, all idle thoughts cast out, 
And make my very dreams devout. 

It may be that you never had occasion to make this 
prayer, but should loose and idle thoughts come to 
you in dreams, it will be well for you to ask your- 
self what relation they bear to the thoughts you 
cherish and the deeds you do when awake. 

We proceed yet a step farther, and tread softly, 
feeling that we are upon holy ground. There are 
dreams that come directly from God. This is a 
solemn mystery, and also a solemn truth. I do 
not say, nor do I believe, that in these days by 
dreams any new revelation is made of the prin- 
ciples of divine truth, or of any facts supplemen- 
tary to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The 
completed canon of Holy Scripture and the living 
Church with its ordinances and appointments are 
enough, with the guiding, illuminating, interpret- 
ing of the Holy Ghost, to enlighten, uplift, and 
save the world. We are not to expect any supple- 
mentary New Testaments, because we do not need 
them. They would be given if they were needed. 
The Church is equal to its mighty mission. God 
has built, equipped, and provisioned the ship for 
the voyage. She has sailed, and is still sailing, 
stormy seas under darkened skies; she has a true 
chart and compass, and the Master is on board. 
She will make the port. But while there is no 
need of further objective revelation of Christian 
truth, every receptive soul has continual revela- 
tions of subjective truth by the Holy Spirit. Daily, 



Dreams. 



hourly, instantly, the receptive soul is touched, il- 
luminated, strengthened, uplifted, and upheld by 
the Spirit of God. This we all believe— yea, some 
of us do, and all may joyfully know. 

It is said to be a well-established fact in science 
that the living brain never rests. The fact of un- 
conscious cerebration is universally conceded, and 
some of the phenomena attending it make the 
most interesting chapters in psychological studies. 
Can we believe that the Holy Spirit is barred from 
access to the human soul when wrapped in slum- 
ber? God's chosen ones — Jacob, Joseph, Daniel, 
in the Old Testament, and Joseph and Mary, and 
Peter and Paul, in the New Testament — were 
dreamers; and a great company of devout and 
finely-tuned souls all along the ages have had 
dreams that meant much to themselves, if not to 
others. The belief that every human being has a 
guardian angel that never fails in its loving watch, 
is held by many, and is not without some support 
from the Holy Scriptures. It is a more solemn 
and inspiring thought that nightly slumbers are 
sentineled by the Holy Spirit that like the viewless 
wind comes in the still, small voice as well as in 
the rushing, mighty whirlwind. Like a photo- 
graphic plate ready for the touch of the sunbeam, 
she who sinks into sleep in the companionship of 
pure thoughts and holy affections and divine aspi- 
rations is prepared for the touch of the Eternal 
Sun that shineth in the darkness as in the light, 
whose beams flood the spiritual universe with the 
glory of God. Whoso hath once felt the divine 
touch in a dream of the night will never forget it. It 
is an experience that makes forever sacred the quiet, 
blessed world, and adds another degree in the 
schooling of the elect soul that is learning heav- 
enly secrets in the school of God. We walk here 



190 



Sunset Views, 



with sandaled feet. William Cullen Bryant's ex- 
quisite poem, 66 The Land of Dreams," almost 
quotes itself as he sings of that mighty realm " with 
steps that hang in the twilight sky," over " whose 
shadowy borders flow sweet rays from the world 
of endless morn." 

That was a hard thing required of Daniel the 
prophet by the king whose dream had passed from 
him, and yet left him troubled in spirit: he must 
tell the dream, and then give its interpretation. 
By divine inspiration the man of God did the won- 
derful thing required of him. Though I cannot 
claim Daniel's inspiration, I have read the Book 
of God and dreamed my own dreams and seen 
life in many phases in many places. What are 
your dreams to-day? You cannot help dream- 
ing of the future; you were created for immor- 
tality and never-ending progress. Who can tell the 
thoughts of a young maiden standing where you 
do now? Love and duty, pleasure and service, 
earth and heaven, are mingled in your thoughts 
this day. The glintings of the figures in a kalei- 
doscope, the changes of a summer sunset sky, but 
faintly illustrate the quick-coming and quick-going 
fancies of a young soul in the blossoming season 
of life. Your horizon is wide and indefinite — and 
therein is its fascination. Vastness and mystery 
make the charm of the ocean. I have stood on the 
shore of the mighty Pacific on the long stretch of 
white beach just beyond the Golden Gate, and 
watched the great breakers as they came rolling in, 
and felt in my soul that strange thrill and sense of 
unlimited power that accompany the touch of Na- 
ture in her mightiest manifestations. As I thus 
stood and gazed upon the sea, that best symbol of 
infinity, my soul was flooded with that sense of the 
Infinite which is the most exalted mood of the im- 



Dreams. 



191 



mortal mind. Thisvastness and this mystery make 
the charm of your daydreams now. Your hori- 
zon is boundless. The universe and its all-glo- 
rious Author; time, with its changes and chances; 
eternity, with its ever-widening prospect, and 
ever-enlarging vision ; the pleasure of fresh ac- 
quisitions of knowledge in fields that are illimit- 
able — these are the subjects of daydreams that float 
in airy splendor through young minds like yours 
that have been trained to the contemplation of the 
attributes and works of the Infinite God. The 
sweetness and glory of this vision are yours forever, 
if you will have it so. The deepest sense of joy in 
the revelation of truth to the mind and of love to the 
heart is in the assurance that there is an inexhaust- 
ible fullness of both in reservation for all faithful 
souls. / shall be satisfied \ vjhen I avjake, with thy 
likeness, was the declaration of a sacred singer 
who in his dream of blessedness had swept through 
the gate of the eternal city and caught the choral 
songs of the angels of God and their triumphant 
doxologies to the King of glory. He would be sat- 
isfied, when he awaked, to find that his dreams of 
perfection were turned into actualities; he would 
be satisfied because he would then enter upon a 
state of existence freed from the disabilities and 
limitations of earth, clothed upon with immortality. 

In the dream world we now find the analogue and 
prophecy of the sublime realities of the life to come. 
That remarkable thinker, Isaac Taylor, in his 
" Physical Theory of Another Life," speculated 
as to the nature and powers of the resurrection 
body. He says it may be as tenuous as the veil 
of the aurora, or it may be as dense as the finest 
gold, but it will be clothed with tremendous power. 
Its flight will be swift enough to overtake the swift- 
est planet in its orbit. It is said that electricity 



192 



Sunset Views. 



moves at the rate of two hundred and eighty thou- 
sand miles in a second: the rate of travel is faster 
in a dream. The unfettered movement of the spir- 
itual body will transcend the known realities of 
science and the marvels of the world of dreams. 
Simple volition ma}' be sufficient to carry it from 
world to world. Paul, while lying stunned on the 
commons of Lystra, had time to pass through the 
first and second into the third heaven, and got such 
a glimpse of its wonders and glories as it was un- 
lawful for him to disclose in the imperfect language 
of earth. After such a flight as that, it is no mar- 
vel that his heart was calm and his nerves steady 
when driven before Euroclydon in stormy Adria. 
Nor is it strange that when the time drew nigh when 
he was to pass through the gate of martyrdom to 
sweep again past shining worlds and constellations 
to the heaven of which he had caught that brief 
but vivid glimpse, he was filled w r ith a solemn and 
mighty joy. These dreams in which time and space 
are so nearly annihilated give us hints of what we 
shall realize when we awake in the likeness of God. 
This body is sown in weakness: it w T ill be raised in 
power. It is sown a natural body; it will be raised 
a spiritual body. 

I know not what awaits each one of you in com- 
ing life . I would not lift the veil that hides your fu- 
ture. There will be joy and grief, smiles and tears, 
orange blossoms and funereal weeds, sunshine 
and shadow r , glad surprises and shocks of sudden 
calamity. Your life journey leads by a way you 
know not. It is best you should not know. When 
you come to the rugged hills, climb them. Enjoy 
the beautiful landscapes as you pass them. And 
rest assured that at the end of } r our journey every 
good thing that has entered into your aspiration, 
plan, and purpose will greet you in that world where 



Dreams, 



*93 



hope is changed into fruition, and the longing for 
perfection shall find its realization. Your highest 
dreams of spiritual purity, exaltation, and blessed- 
ness now are sure prophecies of what you shall be 
then. What you put into your dream here, God 
will put into vour destinv there. 
*3 



A MAN WANTED. 



Text: "And I sought for a man among them, that should 
make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, 
that I should not destroy it : but I found none." (Ezek. xxii. 30.) 



A MAN WANTED. 



THAT was a remarkable statement which we 
read in the twenty-second chapter of Eze- 
kiel: 64 1 sought for a man among them, that 
should make up the hedge, and stand in the 
gap before me for the land, that I should 
not destroy it; but I found none" 

It was a crisis in the nation's history. A man 
was needed to meet that crisis. None could be 
found, and the gracious purpose of deliverance 
was thwarted because of the lack of a suitable hu- 
man instrument. 

Do not be startled at this statement. It is not 
mine: it is God's own. And, reduced to its last 
analysis, it simply affirms that God will not over- 
ride the free agency of man, and that moral results 
can be secured only by moral agency. It is the old 
truth, old asthe government of God, that men can- 
not be saved from the consequences of their own 
volitions without degrading them from the plane of 
reason and responsibility to that of the brute crea- 
tion. 

God wanted a man of a particular sort for a spe- 
cific work. Why did he not make a man for the 
emergency? That is not his way. God never 
made but one man directly, and that was Adam. 
Men are made by the operation of God's laws of 
physical, mental, and moral development. God 
uses men thus developed, but he never raises up 
men for special work by any influence or process 
that ignores or destroys human freedom and ac- 
countability. 

God wanted a man, and looked for him, but 

(197) 



Sunset Views. 



could not find him. He .looked at the priesthood, 
but there was no one among them whose soul was 
ready at the divine touch to kindle with prophetic 
fire. He looked among the soldiers, but among 
them all could be found not one who had the nerve, 
brain, and heart of a hero. He looked among the 
scribes or teachers, but found not one among them 
all who could go beyond the perfunctory round of 
heartless instruction, mumbling over the dead let- 
ter of truths that once throbbed with heavenly life. 
He looked among the old men to find a leader 
whose ripened wisdom w r as equal to the solution of 
the vital problems of the time, but found only se- 
nility, servility, and the selfishness that shuts out 
truth and destroys true manhood. He looked 
among the young men to find a hero, but there was 
no heroic metal found in that mass of sensuality, 
greed, and vanity ; that crowd of swindlers, robbers, 
and dudes. The nation was bankrupt in morals 
and patriotism, and it perished. God's draft on 
them for a man went to protest. No miracle could 
save them. Miracles! They are never wrought 
except in cooperation with suitable human agency. 
At this time the channels were so obstructed that 
the only communication possible between God and 
apostate Israel was the announcement of the na- 
tion's impending doom, through the lips of the one 
man whose soul was true enough to deliver God's 
message faithfully. 

It w r as surely an evil time. The hedges were 
broken — that is, lawlessness was rampant; even 
the forms of law were disregarded ; justice was 
trampled under foot; the worship of God was 
neglected; the Sabbath profaned; prince, priest, 
and people were involved in a common guiltiness 
before God. The barriers between right and 
wrong were broken down, and the land was 



A Man Wanted. 



199 



mourning because of evil doers and evil doing. 
Forsworn officers of the law, official robbers, 
unfaithful teachers, unholy priests, and lying 
prophets abounded. A man was wanted to stand 
in the gap — to restore the supremacy of law, to 
rescue the holy Sabbath from desecration, to pun- 
ish criminals, and to protect the innocent. 

A man was wanted, not a manikin; not a frac- 
tion of a man ; not a crank whose gimlet eyes could 
see only one angle of a single issue ; not a wordy 
theorizer who filled the air with noise and yet did 
nothing; not a sham reformer whose patriotism was 
patronage, whose piety was personal profit. A man 
was wanted to stand in the gap — a man who could 
not be bought by money or office, a man who could 
not be seduced by cunning nor intimidated by 
force; a man who would stand against odds, and 
stand alone if need be. A man? Where is he? 
Let us look for him to-day, not in the annals of the 
dead Israelites who have been hundreds of years 
in their graves, but among the living of our own 
time. 

We want a man for the pulpit who will stand in 
the gap against false doctrine and as an adminis- 
trator of discipline. We want a man, not a mere 
echo or make-believe. The pulpit needs real men, 
not sensationalists who would rather excite the as- 
tonishment of a crowd than rouse them to repent- 
ance, nor the blusterer who is vehement in general 
denunciation of general wrongdoing, but would 
not risk the loss of a nickel or the smile of a ras- 
cal by grappling with existing evils or crossing the 
path of a corruptionist. 

We want men who will stand up for the doctrines 
of the Church — not heresy-hunters, but lovers of 
the truth, and with such a true sense of honor that, 
when their convictions change and they can no 



200 



Sunset Views. 



longer conform to their ordination vows, they will 
exercise a freeman's right and go elsewhere. 

The ethics of the man who, after taking the sol- 
emn vow of agreement with the doctrine and dis- 
cipline of his Church, and promising to preach 
according to its standards and to enforce its disci- 
pline, violates that vow and promise, using the 
very pulpit committed to him as a battery to de- 
stroy what he was placed there to support and de- 
fend — the ethics of such a man are below those of 
a mock-auction house or a gambling hell. 

Liberality is a good thing, but let us not mistake 
indifference to truth and treachery to friends for 
liberality. Liberality is a good thing when it is 
genuine, when it is conjoined with earnest convic- 
tion, the courage that dares to defend the truth, 
and the magnanimity that allows every other man 
the freedom you claim for yourself. But of the so- 
called liberality that has a welcome for every new 
folly that swaggers into the arena, and a sneer for 
all who insist upon old and exalted notions of hon- 
or and prefer to walk in the old paths until certain 
that they can find better ones; of the liberality 
that is forever beating against the foundations of 
our faith; of the liberality that offers us nothing 
in exchange for the truth we love except the dreary 
negations of doubt and the angry denunciations of 
the unbelief that has its root in the heart of sin ; of 
the liberality that eats the bread of the Church of 
Christ while at the same time seeking the plaudits 
of the shallow-brained and godless rabble who 
denounce and ridicule it — of that sort of liberality 
we have had enough. Men are wanted for the 
pulpit who will stand in the gap against all ene- 
mies of truth. 

Men are wanted who will stand in the gap and 
maintain the discipline of the Church. There 



A Man Wanted. 



20I 



are many who see the evil resulting from failure 
to enforce discipline, and many are speaking out. 
But who are doing anything? Among our men 
covetousness, intemperance, peculation, lying, 
cheating are breaking down the hedges, obliter- 
ating the old landmarks of our fathers, while our 
women are running mad with the vanities of the 
world. But who ever hears of a case of disci- 
pline? Some of our beloved brothers in the pul- 
pit seem to make up for their failure to enforce 
discipline by the arraignment of individual law- 
breakers, by more vehement denunciation of sin 
in general terms from the pulpit. Why, I know 
of a preacher who has preached enough reform 
sermons to have started a new reformation during 
the last two years, and yet has never brought a 
single individual transgressor of his charge to trial, 
the world all the time rushing in like a flood and 
scandals in circles that ought to be holy filling the 
air with moral malaria. Oh, the casuistry of the 
devil! It is subtle, it is insinuating, it will invade 
the pulpit itself. By this pulpit blustering a preach- 
er conceals from himself the fact that he is a fraud 
in the sight of God. Men are wanted in the pulpit 
who will stand in these gaps, not holiday soldiers 
for rhetorical parade and elocutionary fireworks. 
Men are wanted not simplv to notify the public to 
come every Sunday and hear them declaim against 
the gigantic evils of the times, but who will stand 
in the gap in person, and by wholesome example 
and faithful enforcement of discipline demonstrate 
that their eloquence is not mere brutum fulmen, 
and that their manhood is genuine manhood. Our 
country is rich in the possession of some such men : 
it would be richer if it had more of them. 

Men are wanted in newspaper offices to stand 
in the gap against the evils of these times. Our 



202 



Sunset Views, 



editors are themselves teachers, censors, critics, 
guides to the rest of us. The man and the editor 
are too often separated. The man is a Chris- 
tian; the editor runs his paper by antichristian 
methods. The man, in an editorial, denounces 
corruption in politics and dishonesty everywhere, 
while the advertising columns of his paper en- 
courage every fraud and shameful imposition 
upon credulity, from the pills that infallibly cure 
all incurable diseases to the mysterious machines 
that will do everything short of raising the dead, 
from the sure way of making a fortune by the in- 
vestment of a dollar to the " blind" advertisement 
that means on its face nothing but theft. Nobody 
will defend this sort of thing. But who will arrest 
the evil? Where is the man who will stand in the 
gap and raise our journalism to the proper stand- 
ard ? Where is the community that will support a 
true man in such a reform of journalism? 

Men are wanted to stand in the gap against cor- 
ruption in politics. I shall indulge in no cant con- 
cerning politics or politicians. Politics is the science 
or the art of government. Every American citi- 
zen ought to be a politician. The citizen who op- 
poses all political parties, like the religionist who 
opposes all religious denominations, usually means 
all except his own. Party organization is a neces- 
sity under such a government as ours. Party 
fealty is a virtue. Parties mean policies, and pol- 
icies are political economy in the concrete. 

When a Christian citizen in this country eschews 
politics, he offers a premium for bad government. 
The pie brigade always votes: the pious brigade, 
what shall it do ? Shall Christian men wrap them- 
selves in their robes of self-righteousness and keep 
out of politics for fear of contamination? Shall 
they quiet their consciences and acquit themselves 



A Man Wanted. 



203 



of the obligations of patriotism by whining over 
the misgovernment they did nothing to prevent 
and denouncing the rascals whom they by their 
blamable inaction helped to put in office? The 
young citizen with a dreamy look and his roached 
hair, who quotes Latin and Greek and is too dainty 
to vote, too lofty in his soarings after the infinite 
to become interested in politics, is the weak tea of 
the body politic, and the more it is sweetened the 
worse it tastes. The manhood of the nation is 
mostly to be found in its great party organizations. 
The mugwump has his function, and I have noth- 
ing to say against him in this connection; but it is 
easy to see that a nation of mugwumps would be a 
nation without policies or practical statesmanship. 
The want of the times is men that are good, not 
goody — men that will lead in support of definite 
policies, not theorists nor sentimentalists that do 
nothing but talk, or whine, or dream, or rhapso- 
dize sweetly w 7 hen in a good humor and anathe- 
matize wildly when they are not. 

But suppose your party goes wrong, must you 
follow it still? Then comes the test of manhood. 
Then you must stand in the gap, clinging to princi- 
ples rather than empty names. One true man may 
save a party from ruin by throwing himself across 
its path when it goes wrong. Party fealty is a good 
thing, but it does not require a Christian man to 
join forces with the barroom element of society, 
nor to vote for a man he knows to be a scoundrel. 
I will follow my party as far as a man can go with 
a clear conscience; but when it would lead me 
through a whisky saloon, we part company then 
and there. If politics is a dirty pool, it is because 
it has been left to the control of the dirty fellows 
who make it a trade. You have seen the fellow 
who begins his campaign for an office by denoun- 



204 



Sunset Views, 



cing party organization and officeholding. You 
have also seen the man who, in leading or aiding 
a genuine reform movement, refused to be an in- 
cumbent or a candidate for any office in order that 
his hands might be unfettered and his motives be- 
yond suspicion. 

A man ! there he goes limping to his daily toil, 
with head erect and cheerful mien, an emptv 
sleeve dangling at his side. He fought on the side 
of his convictions in the civil war, and left part of 
his corpus on the field of battle. There he goes 
to his work. He does not whine nor grumble. 
He gets no pension, but out of his hard earnings 
he pays his quota to the miraculous Federal pen- 
sion list, which, in defiance of all precedent and 
all natural law, grows bigger and bigger as we 
get farther and farther from the war. There he 
goes ! the crippled Confederate who makes his own 
living, pays his taxes, and stands erect in the 
strength of a genuine manhood. Lift your hat to 
him : he is a man. 

A man ! there he goes to his recitations, a young 
man who works his way through college. The 
silver spoons of the family were melted or stolen 
during the w r ar, and he was not 6 ' born with a sil- 
ver spoon in his mouth.*' But he was born with 
a better heritage: in his heart and brain w r ere the 
elements of true manhood that will make this 
Southern land bloom into a prosperity more glori- 
ous than ever before. 

There he goes! the young man of genius, w T ho 
deliberately turns away from money-making and 
the prizes he might win in secular professions and 
takes the post of difficulty and toil in the work of 
philanthropy and religion, performing the labor of 
three men w r ith not half the pay of one, that insti- 
tutions may be established and endowed to bless 



A Man Wanted, 



205 



the generations yet to be born. Talk of endow- 
ment for our colleges ! Their moral endowment 
has already come in the self-abnegation and hero- 
ism expended upon them by the true men, living 
and dead, who have given themselves, soul and 
body, and substance, to this work. The money 
endowment is on the way, and will come when 
wise money-users become as numerous as money- 
grabbers and money-worshipers are now. 

Men are wanted everywhere — men who are hon- 
est in trade ; real estate agents who are discrimi- 
nating in the use of descriptive adjectives; farmers 
who will put on top an article not above the average 
in size and quality; dairymen who will sell butter 
of natural color and milk of natural quality, inno- 
cent of springor pump ; druggists whose compounds 
are true to their labels ; millers whose measures are 
the same for buyer and seller; editors who would 
rather be scooped than to lie; hotel-keepers whose 
beds and bills of fare do not mean insomnia, dys- 
pepsia, and extortion ; liverymen who know the hour 
of the day and have one price for all who are able 
to pay; bankers who will speculate only with the 
money that belongs to themselves; manufacturers 
who allow their employees to share in their pros- 
perity; lawyers who apply to their own conduct the 
principles of equity and the rules of law which 
they demand in behalf of their clients for a con- 
sideration; doctors to whom quackery in every 
form is as abhorrent in fact as it is in their profes- 
sions; judges who will hold the scales of justice 
with even hand though a millionaire be on the one 
side and a penniless man on the other. 

These are the sort of men that are wanted every- 
where, to check the tendency toward deterioration 
in our national life, to repair the breaches that 
have already been made in our moral defenses, and 



2o6 



Sunset Views, 



to carry our beloved country forward surely and 
steadily in the path of prosperity, progress, and true 
national glory. 

A man was wanted in Israel to meet the national 
crisis. Nothing is said here about a woman being 
wanted. Why? Because the work was unsuited 
to women — at least to the women of that day. It 
was rough work that was to be done in troublous 
times, and the higher the quality of the woman as 
a woman the less was she suited to it. The best 
women of Israel at that time were busy otherwise, 
taking care of the homes where purity and love and 
reverence still dwelt. Man can no more do wom- 
an's work than she can do his work. There are 
exceptions in both directions, but they should be 
regarded as exceptions. Man for the field, the fo- 
rum, and the senate ; woman for the home. When 
no man can be found to meet Sisera in the high 
places of the field, a Jael may be found with nail 
and hammer to smite the sleeping warrior. But if 
I were looking for a woman to put her hand in 
mine to walk with me through life, I would prefer 
the hand of one who had smoothed the brow of 
care, wiped the death-damps from the face of the 
dying, or curled the locks of childhood in a home 
brightened and hallowed by her presence and min- 
istries. When the manhood of Israel was so dete- 
riorated that no man could be found with a soul 
true enough to be a channel of communication 
with God, and voice his will to the nation, a Huldah 
or a Deborah was chosen for the emergency; but 
every Bible reader and student feels that these were 
exceptional cases, and furnish precedents that will 
apply to us only when the time comes that God will 
look for a man among us and find none to stand 
in the gap. And that dark day will never come to 
us so long as our homes are blessed with the types 



A Man Wanted. 



207 



of womanhood that adorn and glorify them now. 
So long as woman is what she ought to be in the 
home, manhood will not be lacking for public serv- 
ice. God wants men now for the work that is to 
be done now. 



FINISHED. 



14 



u The pathos of all time and life is the contrast between the 
illimitable thirst and the unsatisfying draught, between the 
flagging ideal and the lagging real, between the dream and 
the accomplishment, between aspiration and capacity and pow- 
er on the one hand, and change, limitation, disease, and death 
on the other.'' 



FINISHED. 

[A Baccalaureate Talk to Young Women.] 

TO-DAY your college course will be finished. 
Finished ! That word has music and inspi- 
ration in it. It may be taken as the key- 
note and motto of this long-expected hour. 
There is a peculiar satisfaction in contem- 
plating any well-finished work. The Divine Mind it- 
self, we may believe, enjoys this satisfaction. When 
on the seventh day the heavens and the earth were 
finished, and all the host of them, and God had end- 
ed his work which he had made, he rested from all 
his work, making a sort of holiday, a joyful pause 
in the exercise of omnipotent creative energy. The 
Infinite Worker, surveying everything that he had 
made, saw that it was very good, and rejoiced in 
its perfection. Every true life is brightened with 
these holidays — holy days. This is a holiday for 
you, my young friends. May your future lives be 
full of the days of brightness and joy! I wish I 
could tell you how to make them so. This is the 
secret that I would whisper in your listening ears 
to-day. This is the gem that I would drop into the 
jewel-box of your memories at this hour. 

Finished ! To a cynical spirit there might seem 
to be an irony in the use of the word with refer- 
ence to anything that can be planned or done in 
this life. But I have no sympathy with the spirit 
that would belittle this present life and brand it 
with incompleteness and failure. This is a good 
world. It is not in any sense a failure. No, my 
young friends, I come not to wail a dirge in the 
ears of youth and hope to-day, but rather to sound 

(211) 



212 



Sunset Views. 



a true note in the harmonies of a universe ruled 
by the God of goodness and love. 

Incompleteness is the complaint of the pessimist 
and the taunt of the infidel. But I see it not. I do 
see slow growth and gradual development. I do 
see decay and what we call death on this plane of 
being. But I see no incompleteness. In the di- 
vine order everything is beautiful in its time. It is 
onlv when that order is violated that deformity, dis- 
cord, and misery result. In a true sense this life 
may be as complete as that of the angels of God. 
The prayer that the will of God may be done on 
earth as the angels do it in heaven is fulfilled in 
every true life. The bud, the bloom, the fruit are 
all complete, each in its season, in the life-work of 
every true soul. 

To many there is a vagueness in the expression, 
" life-work." Many a nature, rich in undeveloped 
capability, has dreamed away life's opportunity be- 
cause no such work was found, or moped it away 
because it did not come in the shape desired. The 
deepest and wisest saying of George Eliot is, that 
our duties are chosen for us. When we first awake 
to moral consciousness we find ourselves in a mov- 
ing current already made for us, and are swept on 
with it as resistlessly as the blue waters of the Cum- 
berland flow onward till they meet and mingle with 
the Tennessee's sister wave. We cannot control 
the current of events. We can only do our duty 
as it comes to us day by day. Young people of 
both sexes talk of seeking a career, when the ca- 
reer is ready made for them by inherited relation- 
ships, obligations, and conditions. The blessed- 
ness of life is found in accepting these relation- 
ships, obligations , and conditions, and bravely fight- 
ing the battle of life on the arena where God has 
placed us. I would not repress lofty aspiration 



Finished. 



2213 



nor clip the wings of imagination that would soar 
into realms of ideal beauty, but I would have you 
plant your feet on the solid rounds of the ladder 
of duty in your upward movement. I would not 
banish the glamour of poetry and sentiment from 
your sky, but I would have your everyday life 
transfigured with the light reflected from God's 
face. It is in this soil of the everyday life that 
the fair flower of blessedness blooms in its divinest 
beauty. It is in the home circle that it sheds the 
fragrance of paradise. Let the truism be repeated : 
it is not so much the sort of service in which we 
shall be employed as the spirit in which it will be 
rendered that will determine the happiness or mis- 
ery, the success or failure, of our lives. God will 
choose your sphere and allot to you your work if 
you are willing. He has a plan of life for each of 
you as definite as the orbit in which this earth 
sweeps around the sun. Take this thought into 
your minds to-day, and take God into your life — 
into all its plans, purposes, hopes,' and aspirations, 
so that it may not connect itself only with time, 
and death, and oblivion, but with immortality, eter- 
nity, and God. 

Do not attempt too much. Perhaps it is not nec- 
essary that the average modern young lady should 
be warned against overwork. Very few of the 
young ladies of my acquaintance are in any danger 
of suicide from this cause. But it is true that 
many, forgetting the limitations of human life, form 
no definite plan of living, and so they take an un- 
satisfying sip of everything and get no full draught of 
anything. It is true of women as it is of men that 
to be or to do anything of consequence in this age 
of the world they must specialize. You cannot be 
a woman of fashion, a literary woman, and a good 
housekeeper all at once, any more than a man can 



21^ 



Sunset Viezvs 



be a doctor, preacher, farmer, and justice of the 
peace all at the same time. Some women make 
this experiment, and the results are peculiar. 
They write poetry the reading of which sets your 
teeth on edge; the dinners they set before you 
would give an anaconda dyspepsia: and their fash- 
ionable airs are awkward burlesques of the elegant 
fripperies of society. You must make a choice. 
You cannot have everything at once. Grasping 
at all, you lose all. But there is some precious 
prize for each one. Genius is a universal gift. 
Every one of you is a genius. On each one of 
you God has bestowed some special endowment. 
There is some one thing you can do better than 
another. But when I speak of genius, you at once 
think of art, literature, or music. It is sad to think 
of the money and time that have been wasted in 
trying to develop powers that did not exist. In 
some institutions of learning visited by me I have 
gone into the art department and gazed upon land- 
scapes such as God never made: '"'impossible 
mountains lifted into the encumbered sky ' * ; cows 
that would have made Barnum's fortune as natural 
curiosities; horses that never had a prototype ex- 
cept in a nightmare: trees such as never grew on 
land, and ships such as never sailed on water. 
And then the music I have heard from unhappy 
girls who had ambition, or whose mothers were 
ambitious for them, but who lacked time and tune 
and touch ! There is a pathos about a piano. Xo 
other instrument has ever endured such persecu- 
tion. Xo other instrument has ever inflicted more 
pain upon those who were not blessed with either 
deafness or the privilege of flight. The piano, the 
everlasting piano ! I hope I may be forgiven for 
the conventional hypocrisy of which it has caused 
me to be guilty a hundred times when, after listen- 



Finished. 



215 



ing to piece after piece from one of these coffee- 
mill performers with my nerves so tortured that I 
was ready to scream in agony, I have asked for 
more ! Genius does not always lie in these direc- 
tions. Sometimes it does. There arepoets, paint- 
ers, and musicians. I have no fear that in these 
remarks I shall discourage any true child of genius. 
The winged bird w T ill fly. The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table has a beautiful but fallacious lit- 
tle poem entitled " The Voiceless," in which he 
says : 

A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisj Fame is proud to win them: 

Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in them ! 

We might almost be thankful that some of these 
poets did die with all their music in them. A true 
song bird will sing — and so, alas ! will the crow, the 
jaybird, the catbird, and the goose. There is no 
ground for fear that genius will not know itself 
when it comes in any of these forms. But, com- 
ing in other forms, it is too often a gift unrecog- 
nized or despised by its owner. 

The best gifts are the common gifts. There is 
no richer gift to a woman than a sweet, magnetic 
voice: it is better than poetry, philosophy, or pi- 
ano playing. A loud-voiced woman is always at a 
disadvantage, unless she is very beautiful and bril- 
liant. I advise every one of you to cultivate the 
gift if you possess it, and to acquire it if you have 
it not. Cultivate it? How? By earnest thinking 
and the culture of gentle affections. The tone of 
the thought and the disposition of the heart react 
upon all the organs by which the soul finds expres- 
sion. 

The woman who has a genius for sympathy is 
richly endowed. She blesses the home where she 



2l6 



Sunset Views. 



presides as a mother or ministers as daughter and 
sister. She carries sunshine and helpfulness into 
the abodes of sin and want. She brightens all the 
paths she treads, and blesses every circle she en- 
ters. Not only married women and betrothed 
maidens have this gift, but single women too. If I 
have ever known angels in human form thev be- 
longed to the class called old maids: pure and un- 
selfish single women who. instead of making homes 
for themselves, have devoted their lives to others, 
practicing a self-abnegation bevond the compre- 
hension of lower natures, and winning the bright- 
est crowns that will be worn in heaven; sweet and 
gentle souls wedded to religion and humanity, 
walking the earth stainless in their white, vestal 
robes, the counselors of youth and inexperience, 
the consolers of sorrow, the safe repositories of 
family troubles and secret griefs, the pillars of the 
Church, the mothers of orphanage, the salt of the 
earth, and the lights of the world. 

And then there is the gift of — what shall I call 
it? — the gift of household magic, the quality that 
enables its possessor without apparent strain or 
hurry to keep all things in order about the home. 
Such a woman makes a poem of the cottage or 
mansion over which she presides. She herself 
is a poem sweeter than Homer or Shakespeare ever 
sung. This includes the gift of cooking', a gift 
every woman ought to acquire. Every lady ought 
to know how to make good bread, good butter, and 
good coffee. These are the staples of good living. 
The art of making bad butter is carried to perfec- 
tion in this country, and there are women who 
make coffee for forty years and make it worse and 
worse to the very last. The lady who can make 
a better waffle than her neighbors is a genius and 
a public benefactress. This matter of good cook- 



Finished. 



217 



ing is one of even national importance. Good 
cooking makes good digestion; good digestion 
makes good temper; good temper makes happy 
homes; happy homes make happy communities; 
happv communities make happy states ; and happy 
states make a happy nation. So you see the hap- 
piness of this nation depends upon knowing how 
to make good bread, good butter, and good coffee. 

Do not undertake too much, but finish what you 
begin. Finish things. There are some minds that 
are inherently superficial and fragmentary, and 
never will be entirely cured of this defect. They 
never more than half finish anything. Thev read 
a book half through and then throw it aside. If 
thev make a garment, it has to be made over again. 
In their housekeeping everything is slipshod — 
nothing is finished except the patience of a visitor. 
This organic slipshoddy cannot be eradicated. If 
a man marries a woman of this sort, he must bear 
his fate with manly fortitude, and take his cross as 
a means of grace. But it is not in every case or- 
ganic. It is often the result of evil example and 
bad training, and in such cases it may be cured by 
cultivating the habit of finishing things. Let ev- 
erything you do be your best. Make quality, not 
quantity, your aim. Habit will overcome every- 
thing except organic bias, and that it can modify 
and keep in abeyance. The whole of human na- 
ture is a unit, and a loose rivet at one point weak- 
ens the movement of every part. The woman who 
gives me a cup of bad coffee at breakfast I would 
suspect of carelessness concerning the ninth com- 
mandment. Doughy biscuit would lead me to ex- 
pect half-formed opinion and crudenessof thought 
in the mistress of the house. The furniture of the 
house is the counterpart of that of the mind of its 
owner or occupant. I have seen houses that remind- 



2l8 



Sunset Views. 



ed me of Mrs. Nickleby's conversation. The re- 
flex influence upon the moral nature of accuracy, 
thoroughness in finishing the little tasks of life, is 
worthy of your consideration, my young friends. 

Another view of this subject claims attention. 
The pleasure of finishing things is one of the most 
exquisite within the reach of a human being. The 
simple pleasure of achievement is an evidence of 
the goodness of God who conjoins duty with de- 
light, proportioning the subjective benefit to the 
pain and toil of all right endeavor. There is a per- 
petual and profound dissatisfaction in the mind of 
every person who is conscious that he is not doing 
his best, but a perpetual joy in the contemplation 
of any work which we have perfected according to 
the measure of our ability. When we fail to take 
pleasure in what we do, it is because we have gone 
out of our sphere or become morbid. 

Sweet is the pleasure Itself cannot spoil! 

Is not true leisure One with true toil? 
Thou that would'st take it, Still do thy best; 

Use it, not waste it; Else 'tis no rest. 

Do your best in all you do, and your lives will 
shine in ever-increasing beauty and your hearts 
will sing with ever-deepening joy. Put your best 
into your life-work, and God will put his best into 
your nature and your destiny. This he will do 
by the very laws that he has inwrought into your 
being, and in fulfillment of his gracious assurance 
that if you are faithful over a few things, you shall 
be made ruler over many things; if you are faith- 
ful in that which is least, you will be intrusted with 
that which is greatest. 

Finished ! In an absolute sense there is nothing 
finished here. We all feel this in our best and 
truest moments. The materialists who are doing 
such good work in the fields of science and litera- 



Finished. 



219 



ture and such bungling work elsewhere have an un- 
dercurrent of belief, a sort of subconsciousness of 
a life to come like that which was wrung from the 
heart of the chief of scoffers as he gazed upon the 
pallid face and still form of his dead brother. The 
soul recoils from the abyss of materialism. Im- 
prisoned in matter, it pants for freedom, 

Like some cage-born bird, that hath 
A restless prescience — however won — 
Of a broad pathway leading to the sun, 

With promptings of an oft-reproved faith, 

In sunward yearnings. Stricken tho' her breast, 
And faint her wings with beating at the bars 
Of sense, she looks beyond outlying stars, 

And only in the Infinite finds rest. 

Finished ! If this life were all, there would in- 
deed be a mockery in the word. I have known 
young men to win the highest honors of our best 
schools, and go forth from their halls, followed by 
the admiration, affection, and bright hopes of par- 
ents, teachers, and friends, only to sicken, die, and 
be buried in a few short months. Their images 
are before me now. 

They, the young and strong, who cherished 

Noble longings for the strife, 
By the roadside fell and perished. 

Weary with the march of life. 

And I have seen young maidens, in whom were 
sweetly blended the dignity of high intellectuality 
and the almost angelic charm of womanly beauty 
and goodness, fade away in their loveliness and 
vanish forever from the circles they were so well 
fitted to bless and to adorn. There comes a chill 
and a sickness at the heart in thus seeing genius, 
goodness, and beauty perish from the earth. Did 
I say perish? No, no ! They have not perished. 
Death to them was only the completion of one 
stage in the journey through the eternal years. 



220 



Sunset Views. 



Death to them meant only progress, for there is no 
progress without death. This law is written on 
the very face of the earth and in its heart. It em- 
braces all life and all forward movement on this 
plane of existence, and everywhere we see evi- 
dences and illustrations of its operation. It is seen 
in the development of the vegetable and animal 
life of our globe, whose forms have successively 
perished and given place to other and higher forms. 
We see the operation of this law in the ordinary 
phenomena of vegetable growth: the seed must 
die before it can be quickened, must rot before it 
can germinate, spring up, and grow. This law op- 
erates in the intellectual and moral progress of the 
human race. Truth springs from the ashes of 
error. Every onward movement of humanity dates 
from the death and burial of effete ideas and or- 
ganizations. Ascending a step higher, we see this 
law operating in the providential development of 
Christianity in the earth. The patriarchal dispen- 
sation taught its lesson, vanished, and was suc- 
ceeded by the Mosaic ; that was followed by the 
prophetic, and that in the full development of 
Christianity in the coming of the Son of God. 
Rising still higher, we are led to believe that this law 
that death is necessary to progress shall be illus- 
trated in the sublime catastrophe which is to ter- 
minate the present order of things on this planet, 
and bring in the millennial reign and glory, when 
we shall have a new heaven and a new earth. This 
old world shall die, but the new earth shall be born 
to be the fit abode of the saints, one of the many 
mansions prepared for the family of God. I love 
to think of this world freed from the bondage of sin 
and the reign of death as one of God's many man- 
sions for the abode of his children. Sometimes I 
have felt differently. Bruised, weary, and sorrow- 



Finished. 



221 



ing, I have almost wished to lie down and die, and 
then wing my flight from earth never to see it again, 
and hoping to forget that I had ever trodden its 
paths of pain or tasted its cup of grief. But oftener 
I have felt that earth was dear to me — dear from 
the memory of its sacred joys, dearer from the mem- 
ory of its more sacred sorrows. The glorified spir- 
its in paradise remember the spots hallowed by 
the experiences of earth. The memory of the 
heart never forgets either in this life or the next. 
One such memory comes to my mind now. It was 
a bright, calm October day. With a dear friend 
I stood on the banks of the beautiful Holston at 
Lyon's Point, near Knoxville, Tennessee. Under 
that sky so deep and blue, in sight of the solemn 
mountains stretching away in the dim distance, the 
gentle wind whispering its music in the tree tops 
above us, the autumnal forest flashing in more than 
tropical splendor of gold and scarlet and crim- 
son, the river at our feet singing itself to sleep in 
the stillness — oh! it was a holy and blessed hour; 
heart spoke to heart, soul answered to soul; sky, 
mountain, forest, river, all distilled their influence 
upon us, and we heard in the depths of our souls 
the Still Small Voice in which God speaks to us 
when we are ready to hear. Such a scene needed 
but little change to make it suitable for the new 
earth — and O my friend, shall we not meet again, 
and look up to the same sky and hear nature's 
voice and God's together? 

Nothing good and true can perish. Happy are 
the early dead! ' ' Their eternal summer shall 
not fade." Their names are encircled with the 
halo of everlasting youth. Their endowments 
were the gift of God. Their noble powers still 
exist, and are exerted in a wider, grander sphere. 
That loveliness that brightened the earthly home 



222 



Sunset Views. 



and left it so dark when it took its flight now finds 
a fitting home with the angels. Every real acqui- 
sition made on earth is so much treasure laid up in 
heaven. Every well-finished task of time is put to 
our credit for eternity. Every word truly spoken, 
every prayer earnest and believing, every gentle 
ministry of love, every burden borne with patience, 
every battle fought with the courage of honest con- 
viction, every sorrow endured submissively, are 
blocks polished here for the mansion that awaits 
us in the immortal life to which we are hastening. 
There is no incompleteness or failure in a destiny 
like this. It leaves nothing to be desired. Our 
capacity for acquisition is boundless, and all we 
acquire we shall retain forever. The thought is 
too vast for comprehension, the blessing too great 
for the gratitude and praises of mortality and time, 
and must therefore be relegated to immortality and 
eternity. Every hope is a prophecy. Our thought 
cannot be grander than our destiny. Then ' 6 lead, 
lead me on, my hopes. I know that ye are true 
and not vain. Vanish from my eyes day after day, 
but arise in new forms. I will follow your holy 
deception; follow till ye have brought me to the 
feet of my Father in heaven, w r here I shall find you 
all, with folded wings, spangling the sapphire dusk 
whereon stands his throne which is our home." 



PART III. 

The Pulpit, 



THE HEAVENLY VISION. 



*5 



Text: "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." 
(Acts xxvi. 19.) 



THE HEAVENLY VISION. 



AMONG all the thousands of the young men 
of Israel, why was it that only to Saul of 
Tarsus was granted this heavenly vision? 
This question goes deep into the heart of 
things as we find them in this world. 
The heavenly vision requires two factors — a Di- 
vine Revealer and a human recipient. Not one of 
the apostles was chosen arbitrarily or uncondition- 
ally. Each one was chosen because of his adap- 
tation to the work he was to do. In Galilee there 
were other sturdy fishermen besides Peter, John, 
James, and Andrew, and other tax collectors be- 
sides the keen-edged, lynx-eyed Matthew 7 . The 
ground of their call was in the men themselves as 
well as in God's purpose. But what of Judas? 
Poor Judas ! A single lurid flash reveals his doom. 
It were better for that man that he had never been 
born — a fate worse than annihilation. John tells 
us that Judas w^as a thief. Yet, he was called to 
the apostleship. That call could not have been 
made in ignorance of his true character, for Jesus 
knew what was in man. A thief he may have been 
in organic bias, but nevertheless he had his heav- 
enly vision and his call and opportunity. Every 
man and woman has his or her opportunity. Re- 
sponsibility is measured by opportunity in every 
case. Judas was an apostate: falling from such a 
height, he fell to rise no more. 

There is a solemn passage in the sixth chapter 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews that declares in sub- 
stance the moral impossibility of the recovery of a 
soul that takes this awful plunge from the lofty 

(227) 



228 



Sunset Views. 



height of beloved discipleship into the depths of 
apostasy. 

Judas might have been a messenger of God car- 
rying the light of life to the world, but by his own 
choice he became a traitor. Judas might have been 
Paul, and Paul might have been Judas. Each had 
his choice and his chance. In the lexicon of God, 
choice means choice. There can be no choice un- 
less you have power to choose either way. 

The heavenly vision came to Saul of Tarsus, 
when he was ready for it. In all Israel there was 
not a heart so hungry nor a zeal so burning as his. 
He was no dreamer, shirker, or trimmer. As 
Robert Louis Stevenson puts it: *« If St. Paul had 
not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have 
been a colder Christian." He was an extraordi- 
nary man, and was therefore made the recipient of 
an extraordinary revelation. This is God's way. 
He is no respecter of persons, but he does respect 
his own laws of moral development and providen- 
tial administration in dealing with nations and in- 
dividuals. In all God's beneficent working for 
mankind man must be his coworker. On this 
high plane we stand, and we encounter a commen- 
surate peril. Everywhere in God's universe peril 
is measured by endowment and opportunity. Ac- 
cording to this law, genius makes a Paul or a Judas. 

To each of us the heavenly vision is essentially 
what that of Saul of Tarsus was to him — the reve- 
lation of duty. It comes at one supreme moment, 
but in most cases it is a longtime on the way. All 
his previous life had Saul of Tarsus been under- 
going preparation for the vision that came to him on 
his journey to Damascus. The teaching of his 
pious Jewish parents; the influence of his illustri- 
ous preceptor, Gamaliel; his remembrance of the 
martyr Stephen's dying face and dying words; 



The Heavenly Vision. 



229 



the unanswered questions that had agitated his 
mind; the unsatisfied hunger of his heart — all these 
were steps by which he had climbed up to the height 
of receptivity where a revelation was possible to 
him. The supreme heavenly vision is preceded by 
flashes of partial illumination. The final impera- 
tive summons of the voice of God is preceded by 
many premonitory whisperings to the inner ear. 
Saul, on his way to Damascus, bore within him- 
self the subjective conditions of the marvelous ex- 
perience that changed his life and fixed his destiny. 
The voice that spoke to him answered the question 
that was burning in his soul. The sacred oracles 
speak only to sincere inquirers. For the indiffer- 
ent, the scornful, the willfully deaf, they have no 
voice. The great crises of human life reveal what 
men are — that is all. The decision must be made 
then and there without dela} r , but the forces that 
determine what that decision shall be have been 
gathering in the soul during many silent but fate- 
ful years. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; 
no others can. 

Paul was converted in that moment when he 
obeyed the heavenly vision vouchsafed unto him. 
By the choice of his will he took Jesus into his 
life, making him the supreme object and center 
of his thought, purpose, aspiration, and affection. 
This is what conversion means — surrender and 
choice. His specifically Christian culture came aft- 
erwards — a culture many-sided, symmetrical, grand, 
beautiful. This is the true order — first conversion, 
then culture. If you will make that choice to-day, 
you will go home from this service with a new joy 
in your soul. This choice must be your own act, 
and it is the only gate of entrance into the true life. 
By wrong choice man broke loose from God; by 
right choice he comes back to God. 



230 



Sunset Views, 



One of two processes goes in all lives — a process 
of upward growth and moral development, or of 
declension and death. Every day is a day of pro- 
bation. Freedom of will, power of choice, and 
the necessity for choice, will remain with you to 
the end of your life. After your final victory 
will come your coronation. 

According to the habitual temper of your souls 
will the crises of your lives be met. When the 
habitual tone of a soul is sincere, its tendenc}^ to 
resume an erect position after it has stooped to 
evil is stronger than that of another whose alle- 
giance has all along been only half-hearted. The 
half-decided soul is moving down an inclined 
plane, and it is only a question of time when he 
will reach the bottom — and then comes a catastro- 
phe terribly sudden in its manifestation, gradual 
as it was in its approach. Moral gravitation is as 
certain in its operation as physical gravitation. 
There are no sudden hopeless falls in the moral 
sphere. The man who trifles with sin mortgages 
himself to Satan, and foreclosure is only a question 
of time and persistence. The effort to live a 
double life always fails. The true polarity of the 
soul will reveal itself; the hypocrite's mask will 
be torn off. Truth taken as the companion and 
guide of a human life will draw everything that is 
good in her train. She is from God, and will lead 
you to God. The lie is from hell, and will drag 
the soul thither. Even a little leaven of conscious 
insincerity taints the w r hole nature, and will wreck 
the entire being of its victim. There are consti- 
tutional liars as there are constitutional thieves — 
pseudomaniacs we may call them, to match the 
kleptomaniacs. You have known both classes of 
unfortunates. You ask. What can a constitutional 
liar do for himself? With the help of God let him 



The Heavenly Vision. 



231 



make battle against his hereditary besetment, and 
conquer it. The human will, rightly exercised, 
is adequate to all the needs of a true life. The 
resources of God may be drawn on without limit 
for the strength requisite for obedience to God. 
The command to obey implies the promise of the 
power to obey. Upon the life of some one who 
hears me to-day may rest the shadow of some 
hereditary weakness. That weakness, whatever 
it may be, may actually be made subservient to his 
safety and tributary to his blessedness. Human 
nature is a unit. That which strengthens any part 
strengthens the whole man. Therefore the watch- 
fulness, the self-restraint, the sense of special need 
for God's help to enable you to overcome this he- 
reditary bias toward evil, will regulate the whole 
moral nature, tone up the whole life; and thus an 
inherited disability may become, under the opera- 
tion of a compensatory law of God, a factor in 
the development of a true life and in securing a 
blessed destiny. In a word, there is an upward way 
for all who will walk therein. For the least fa- 
vored there is hope. On the other hand, no supe- 
riority of natural endowment or special advantages 
as to opportunity will suffice to save any man who 
will not do his best. 

In the best families we find ' 6 black sheep" — 
wanderers who go to destruction, so far as we 
know, while poor boys rise to usefulness and hon- 
or despite the heaviest disabilities of heredity and 
environment. He who truly does his best to-day 
will do better to-morrow\ He who willingly falls 
below his best to-day will find himself sunken to a 
still lower level to-morrow. A side-tracked train 
cannot make the original schedule. By a volunta- 
ry backward movement, or by a failure to go for- 
ward when the revelation of duty is made plain in 



232 



Sunset Views, 



the present tense, something will be lost beyond 
recovery. 

It remains true that God deals with every man 
in the present tense. New crises of life come to 
us with the increasing light that enables us to see 
clearer and farther. God loves us too well to al- 
low us to rest satisfied while we are consciously 
unfaithful to our convictions. Tests of character, 
we have said, come suddenly. Decisions must be 
made instantly. When the telegraph bore a mes- 
sage to a candidate for the presidency of the Unit- 
ed States of America asking what reply should be 
given to a charge made against him in the news- 
papers, his fortunes at least for this world were 
pivoted upon the answer. " Tell the truth," wired 
back this sturdy son of a preacher. Had he lied 
or equivocated in that crisis, that would have been 
the last of him as a politician. Underlying that 
answer was the belief in God and the belief in 
truth and righteousness which had been inwrought 
into every fiber of his moral being in the Christian 
home in which he had been reared. 

The heavenly vision — the revelation of duty — 
came to John Wesley when he gave himself to a 
self-denying ministry to the masses when he might 
have aspired to the highest honors of the venera- 
ble ecclesiasticism to which he belonged — an ec- 
clesiasticism whose roll of great names is long, 
and whose scholars, poets, sages, and saints are the 
common heritage of Christendom. 

It was a heavenly vision — the revelation of duty 
— when Francis Asbury renounced home ties and 
home comforts and gave himself to a life of self- 
denial and tireless activity unsurpassed in the his- 
tory of the Church, exhibiting a Christianity mili- 
tant, ever-moving, victorious. 

It was a heavenly vision — the revelation of duty 



The Heavenly Vision. 



233 



— to William Capers when the duty and feasibility 
of evangelizing the negroes of the South flashed 
upon his mind. Disregarding all considerations of 
bodily ease, turning a deaf ear to the dissuasions 
of timid advisers, yielding to no discouragements 
from the faithless and doubting, he entered as a 
pioneer upon a work where many have followed in 
his footsteps. He initiated a movement whose far- 
reaching results God only can foresee, but which 
may include the solution of the race question in 
America and the civilization and evangelization of 
Africa. 

When George F. Pierce, at the call of God, 
turned away from the honorable profession of the 
law and all secular ambitions and pursuits, he was 
not disobedient to the heavenly vision that flashed 
upon his soul in his young manhood. He could 
have sold his heavenly birthright for a mess of po- 
litical pottage, as others have done. His will was 
free, as yours is to-day. He chose the way of 
Christian duty and self-denial, and followed a path 
which shone more and more to the closing day of 
his great career; living and dying poor in this 
world's goods, yet making many rich toward God, 
and furnishing an illustrious example of the true 
blessedness and glory of a life hid with Christ in 
God. 

The heavenly vision — the revelation of duty — 
came to Frederick William Robertson when, with 
all the allurements and advantages of the rich and 
cultured parishes that his genius made accessible 
to him, he chose rather to preach to the working- 
men of Brighton, whose greater need made a stron- 
ger claim upon his service. The light of his sanc- 
tified genius that now shines so brightly on both 
sides of the Atlantic might have been quenched in 
an atmosphere of luxury and ease. 



234 



Su?2set Jl'ezvs. 



The true heavenly vision is clear vision. It pen- 
etrates the disguises of error, the mists of i^no- 
rance 3 and the darkness of sin. Daniel in Baby- 
lon. Joseph in Egypt, Esther in the palace of Shu- 
shan — every man and every woman who has borne 
a cross that humanity might be blessed — furnishes 
an illustration. The heavenly vision not infre- 
quently comes in the choice of a field of Christian 
service. It may come in the recognition of obli- 
gation to surrender some forbidden object dear to 
the natural heart. It may come with the command 
to ally oneself with a minority for the sake of a prin- 
ciple. It may come with a decision to choose pov- 
erty with a good conscience rather than affluence 
through wrongdoing or connivance with wrong- 
doers. When Thomas F. Bayard refused even to 
consider a proposal for investment in the Credit 
Mobilier without an assurance that it was a mat- 
ter which could in nowise be affected by his vote 
or influence as a United States Senator, his coun- 
trymen recognized that if he had not a heavenly 
vision he had at least before his mind and in his 
heart the true chivalry that is without fear and 
without reproach. 

Whoso cherishes no heavenly aspiration can have 
no heavenly vision. The heavenly vision — the rev- 
elation of duty — will come to you when you are 
tuned for the touch. These are great times for us 
because they are our times. All that this life can 
bring us of £*ood or evil is in these times in which 
we live. If I could read your thought at this mo- 
ment, I could foretell what these times will bring 
to you. Your visions, what are they? 

To many Americans the heavenliest of all vi- 
sions is a vision of public office, with a salary at- 
tached thereto. Patriotism in this form is not ex- 
tinct in these United States. There is nothing 



The Heavenly Vision, 235 



wrong in officeholding when it comes as the rec- 
ognition of genuine public spirit and the expres- 
sion of the confidence and esteem of good men; 
but it were better to be a bootblack than a small 
politician, a mere hanger-on of party, somebody 
else's man rather than your own man, a little 
jumping-jack moving when a man of larger brain 
and stronger will pulls the strings of party manage- 
ment. 

To other young Americans the heavenliest of 
visions is a short cut to riches by speculation or 
peculation — the crooked letter S makes the differ- 
ence between them — by which they hope to enjoy 
luxuries they never earned and riches stained with 
dishonor. To others there is nothing better than 
the vision of unlimited indulgence of the appetites, 
which they mistake for freedom and happiness. 

But possibly before the youthful imagination 
there floats another and yet brighter vision — the 
vision of the ideal person who is to share your des- 
tiny, who is to ennoble and brighten your life on 
earth. Without this vision this world would in- 
deed be a duller and colder world to many of the 
truest souls in it. 

But forget not that the supremely heavenly vision 
is the revelation of duty. Upon us of this genera- 
tion the ends of the earth have come. What has 
been achieved during this wonderful nineteenth 
century that is soon to close only suggests the pos- 
sibilities of the century soon to dawn. Our vision 
sweeps a field of boundless opportunity, a field as 
new as that which was opened to the pioneers who 
felled the first oaks and plowed the first furrows in 
this new world. Every age has its own work. 
Every man has his own opportunity. You have your 
chance, as your forefathers had theirs. Science 
has only begun its career of discovery. The world 



236 



Sunset Views. 



is just beginning to spell out its first lessons in po- 
litical economy and sociology. There is no occa- 
sion for any of us to look backward to the past 
and wish that we had an opportunity to do some- 
thing. This is God's good world, and for us this 
is its Golden Age. 



MEROZ. 



Text: " Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse 
ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to 
the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the 
mighty." (Judges v. 23.) 



MEROZ. 



MEROZ is a place mentioned only on^e in 
the Bible — and by that one mention it is 
pilloried in immortal shame. It was sit- 
uated in the northern part of Palestine: 
the site is now unknown. 
At the time of the invasion of Israel by Sisera, 
a call was made upon the nation for soldiers. The 
call was responded to by a portion of the peo- 
ple, a great battle was fought, and by the help of 
God a glorious and decisive victory was achieved. 
Deborah the prophetess celebrated the event in a 
song of triumph, in which, giving God the glory, 
she recites the part borne by the several tribes in 
the struggle, bestowing praise or censure accord- 
ing to the part each had performed. Meroz had 
played an inglorious part, and is thus anathema- 
tized: "Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the 
Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; be- 
cause they came not to the help of the Lord, to 
the help of the Lord against the mighty." 

The struggle was over, the opportunity gone. 
Meroz had failed, and must now bear the conse- 
quences. We are left to conjecture as to the cause 
of this failure of Meroz in the time of trial. 

1. It might have been cowardice. Israel was 
then weak and despised; her enemy was great and 
powerful. 

2. It might have been owing to a thought like 
this : There will be enough to fight the battle with- 
out us. If we do not go, others will. 

3. Or it might have been indolence. 
Cowardice ; devolution, or devolving your work 

upon others; indolence — these three bring the 
curse of the righteous God upon all who come not 
to the help of the Lord in the day of battle. 

( 2 39) 



A NEGLECTED STUDY. 

16 



Text: " Study to be quiet." (i Thess. iv. 



A NEGLECTED STUDY. 

YOU may think that this is rather a strange 
word for these times. What we hear on 
all sides is : Study to be wise ; study to be 
rich ; study to keep up with the times ; 
study to be great; study to make a stir in 
the world; study to find out all that is going on 
around you; study to grab for your share of what 
is to be gotten. This is a strange, sweet note that 
floats down from another sphere — low, but sweet 
and clear: Study to be quiet. It may be the mes- 
sage specially needed by some burdened, sorrow- 
ful soul to whom it comes to-day. 

The Church at Thessalonica has been called 
the model New Testament Church. The apostle 
Paul speaks of them as exemplars of the saving 
power of the gospel, having received the word of 
truth with peculiar joy and exhibited extraordinary 
fidelity in maintaining the cause of Christ. They 
were particularly commended because of the prev- 
alence of brotherly love among themselves; the 
charity of every one of them, according to the 
apostle's testimony, abounding. How much the 
apostle loved these Thessalonian Christians, and 
how highly he commended them, his two letters to 
them furnish ample testimony. 

But some errors had crept into the Church at 
Thessalonica which disturbed its peace and re- 
tarded its growth and prosperity. A portion of 
the membership of the Church had allowed them- 
selves to get into a state of feverish excitement 
concerning the second coming of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. It was very proper that they should feel 

( 2 43) 



Sunset Views. 



an interest in this matter of the second coming of 
Chris:. It is plainly promised, and is irequently 
referred to as an encouragement to believers to be 
faithful and persevering in the discharge of duty, 
and patient under tribulations and persecutions. 
The teaching of the gracious Head of the Church 
in this connection is designed to guard us agair.st 
fanaticism and morbid excitement on the one hand, 
and unbelief and indifference on the other. They 
that love the Lord's appearing look for it with 
h : ly J : y 3 and will be ready , Are you one of those ? 
It is not strange that from time to time in different 
ages the Church has been agitated on this sub-ject. 
It began in the Church at Thessalonica in the year 
60, and is now agitating many people in manv 
places in this year 1S97, It is curious to note how 
various have been the opinions, and how gross the 
misconceptions, of all sorts of alarmists and enthu- 
siasts with regard to this sublime transaction. The 
Thessalonians believed that the second coming 
was at hand, and became so greatl}* excited about 
it that they were in danger of neglecting the daily 
devotions and practical duties of the Christian life. 

This morbid excitability concerning the second 
coming 01 Christ naturally led them to fall into 
another error. They neglected the ordinary bus- 
iness affairs of life, and became a sort of hangers- 
on or loafers, too pious after their fanatical fash- 
ion to work, making debts they could not pay, 
and thus bringing reproach upon the Church. 
And this led naturally to another evil: having no le- 
gitimate business of their own to attend to, they be- 
came ^ busybodies," as the apostle calls them in 
his Second Epistle — that is, intermeddlers in other 
people's affairs, gossips, tale-bearers, mischief- 
makers. This breed of sanctimonious gossips — 
men and women who express the envy, jealousy, 



A Neglected Study. 



2 45 



and suspicion of their little, morbid souls with the 
elongated visages and canting phrases peculiar to 
themselves — is not extinct. Thessalonica had this 
breed of ecclesiastical mosquitoes, and they are 
buzzing and stinging to this very day throughout 
Christendom, from the Thames to the Cumber- 
land. 

The Thessalonians also fell into the error of im- 
moderate sorrow for their dead. Their thought 
had become confused and their hearts even below 
the heathen level. They had enough of Chris- 
tianity to refine, exalt, and intensify their affec- 
tions without the clear perception of the true 
Christian doctrine with regard to the future life 
and inward assurance given by the Holy Spirit to 
the children of God that they are children of one 
Father, heirs of the same inheritance, and are to 
live together with him forever. They illustrated 
the truth of that saying of St. Paul, that if in this 
life only Christians have hope, they are of all men 
most miserable. If there be no meeting place for 
the parted, the holy relationships which God has 
ordained and the holy affections with which he 
has endowed us become mockeries and instru- 
ments of torture to our breaking hearts. These 
Thessalonians possessed Christian sensibilities with 
semi-heathenized ideas concerning the future life, 
and they were therefore dissatisfied, restless, and 
distressed. 

Under these circumstances they needed the 
apostle's injunction: Study to be quiet. There is 
a principle to be understood. There is a grace to 
be attained. 

There is a principle to be understood. The 
truth does not lie on the surface. Study is de- 
manded if we would get into the right attitude of 
soul with regard to this life and that which is to 



246 



Sunset Views. 



come. Study to be quiet: this is the very blessing 
we need. But the more we study the more dis- 
quieted we become, unless we study in the right 
way. Contradiction, confusion, mystery meet us 
everywhere on the plane of nature. Human his- 
tory seems alternately a great tragedy or a huge 
farce. Every human life is a tragedy: it ends in 
death, and death is a tragedy whenever and wher- 
ever it comes. And it is so brief! This side of 
human life is uppermost in the thought and litera- 
ture of all lands in all ages. This is the surface 
view, and it is very disquieting. It begets on the 
one hand the recklessness of spirit that says, Let 
us eat. drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die. 
Or on the other hand it leads to the spirit of de- 
spair that leads a man to curse the day he was 
born. The disquiet of unbelief is divided into 
these two schools — the flippant and reckless, and 
the sad and hopeless. Many who seem to belong 
to the former class really belong to the latter: men 
and women who seek to hush the questionings of 
their hungry souls by the assumption of agnostic 
airs and to deaden their sensibilities by forcing 
the idiot's laughter in the presence of the awful 
mystery of death. On this side, and from this 
point of view, this is a sad, sad. unquiet world. 
To see it aright we must study God's three books — 
the Bible, Nature, Providence. 

We must study the Bible: first of all and most of 
all, we must study the Bible. The Bible is what 
it claims to be — a revelation of truth, a revelation 
of God from God. Yes, it is a revelation: not a 
conundrum, not a puzzle for guesswork, but a rev- 
elation. It reveals an infinite God. We cannot 
understand Infinity, but we can believe in it, we 
can trust it. It reveals a personal God, not a blind 
force. This personal God possesses the attributes 



A Neglected Study, 247 



of goodness, wisdom, and power: yea, he is the 
Supreme Goodness, the Supreme Wisdom, and the 
Supreme Power — just such a God as can govern 
and ought to govern the universe. 

We must study Nature as the revelation of God 
in the natural world. The laws of nature are the 
expression of God's method of working in that 
sphere. The forces of what we call nature are 
mighty, but they are all under the control of their 
Creator. A sparrow does not fall to the ground 
without the operation of the same law of God that 
guides the flaming worlds in space. The right 
study of God's book of nature quiets the mind. 
In the midst of apparent disorder on the surface, 
we see that the physical universe is under the reign 
of absolute law, and we know that behind the law 
is the Lawgiver. Earthquakes, cyclones, water- 
spouts, lightning bolts that kill, and disease and 
pain in the natural sphere, are the correlatives of the 
disorder that is seen in the moral sphere ; but deep 
study shows us that the one and the other are equal- 
ly under the reign of law, and we can be quiet. The 
forces of nature will never get beyond the control 
of the Author of nature. 4 

We must study Providence as the revelation of 
God in human history. Here too we must study 
deeply to find quiet. The history of the human 
race, in the light of divine revelation, demonstrates 
that there is a divine plan and purpose in the lives 
of nations and of individuals. Surface reading 
and fragmentary knowledge may disclose only ap- 
parent confusion and chance work, but close read- 
ing and deep thinking and wider views demon- 
strate that the Lord reigns, and that therefore the 
earth may rejoice in his rulership and rest under 
his rule. He rules and he overrules, making even 
the wrath of men to praise him, never overriding 



248 



Sunset Views. 



or disregarding the moral freedom of man on the 
one hand, nor for one moment abdicating his own 
supreme dominion on the other. Seeing this clear- 
ly, and believing it firmly, the Christian student 
does not lose his quietness of soul every time a 
strong nation oppresses a weak one, or when a 
nominating convention or a popular election seems 
to go wrong. 

There is a grace to be attained, as well as a prin- 
ciple to be understood. Quietude is an experience. 
This implies that we must study in the school of 
prayer. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself is our 
teacher. Thy kingdom come — this is the prayer 
he has taught us to pray. In its wider sense it is 
a prayer for the success of the gospel in all the 
earth. We are reminded that the resources of the 
Head of the Church are equal to the mighty work 
of the conversion of the whole world. The king- 
dom and the power and the glory belong to him. 
He must reign until all enemies are put under his 
feet. Success is certain. Let Paul plant and 
Apollos water: the Lord will send the increase. 
There can be no more doubt of the conversion of 
the world to Christ than of his existence. Not a 
sermon, not a printed page of Christian literature, 
not a prayer, not a dollar nor a dime, shall be 
wasted in this service — if so be that the sermon is 
preached, the literature printed and distributed, 
the prayer made, and the dollar or dime given in 
true faith. The gospel of the grace of God shall 
accomplish that which he pleases, and prosper in 
the thing whereunto it is sent. That is God's 
"shall" : behind it are all the resources of the 
Godhead. And here we find quiet for our minds 
in the survey of the needs of the world and the re- 
sources of Christianity. 

Let us study to be quiet in the school of Christ. 



A Neglected Study. 



His kingdom must be set up in our hearts. That 
kingdom consists of righteousness, peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost. Righteousness first, then peace 
— this is the order, and it cannot be reversed. 
Repentance, forgiveness — pardon, peace — this is 
the order. The true believer thus finds quiet 
for his soul. If you are such a believer, you 
will understand what I am saying. It can be 
known only by experience. "My peace give I 
unto you," said Jesus. "Lo, I am with you al- 
way, even unto the end of the w T orld," is his 
promise to his followers. He told us that it was 
expedient for us that he should go away. Why? 
Because in his bodily presence he was under the 
limitations of matter as to times and places, and 
therefore could be in only one place at one time. 
But having, as it were, turned himself into spirit, 
and poured himself upon the world, he is bound 
by none of the limitations of matter. Wonderful 
is this truth. The personal Christ diffuses his per- 
sonality through all his flock in all ages and in all 
lands. It is true, but it exceeds comprehension. 
Christ in us, the hope of glory: Christ with us, the 
realization of a present-tense blessedness. Nothing 
less could satisfy our souls, overwhelming as it is to 
our minds. He has been with us, he is still with us, 
and he will be with us to the end. 

One thing more we want. The great heart of 
St. Paul knew what would be in our hearts. It is 
a blessed thing for Jesus to be with us here, and 
for us to be with him forever. But the question 
rises in our hearts: What of our loved ones who 
have gone before us to the grave ? Have we looked 
upon their faces and heard their voices for the last 
time? A heaven without the presence of those 
who were dearest to us here on earth would lack 
an element of completeness. It cannot be that 



250 



Sunset Views. 



Christianity would mock the very hope which it 
had kindled in human souls. It cannot be that 
it would reveal an immortality without immortal- 
izing holy love. Knowing the solicitude that was 
in their sorrowful souls, St. Paul adds: "I would 
not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them 
which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as 
others which have no hope. For if we believe 
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also 
which sleep in Jesus will God bring w T ith him. . . . 
Wherefore comfort one another with these words/' 
With this hope in our hearts we can be quiet. The 
sleepers who sleep in Jesus only sleep. We will 
meet them in that morning to part no more. The 
heaven of peace is in the thought. 



A TALK ABOUT TALK. 



Text: "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to 
another, and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of 
remembrance was written before him for them that feared the 
Lord, and that thought upon his named" t Mal. iii. i6. j 



A TALK ABOUT TALK. 



AN important truth is suggested and illus- 
trated in this bit of Old Testament histo- 
ry. That truth is this : That the talk of a 
lifetime is the life. Put all that is said 
about talk in the Bible together, and you 
have a body of teaching that will astonish any 
reader who has not given this subject special at- 
tention. It would make a Bible within the Bible. 
The general proposition announced is worthy of 
consideration just here: The talk of a lifetime is 
the life. Give it a subjective application : The talk 
of your lifetime is your life. Tell me what you 
have said during the last year, and I will then tell 
you what you have been thinking and doing. There 
are some notable sayings in the Bible on this point. 
" Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speak- 
eth," is one of these sayings. The practical apos- 
tle James goes so far as to say, 6 ' If any offend not 
in word, the same is a perfect man and able also 
to bridle the whole body" — a remarkable saying, 
worthy of our particular study. The Master him- 
self says: " Every idle word that men shall speak, 
they shall give account thereof in the day of judg- 
ment. For by thy words shalt thou be justified, 
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." The 
one sin that is unpardonable is a sin of the tongue, 
and that is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
This fearful statement is made in the twelfth chap- 
ter of the Gospel of Matthew. I will not stop here 
and now to consider it exegetically, but you need 
not be told that it carries a tremendous weight of 
meaning. You ask, Can we commit that sin in 

( 2 53) 



2 54 



Sunset Views. 



this day? My answer is, Do not run the risk of 
it. The life here on earth, the verdict of the 
judgment day, and the destiny beyond being in- 
volved in this matter of talk, let us consider it in 
connection with this text. 

Men and women are social beings. They must 
talk, they will talk. Whether rich or poor, sick or 
well, sad or glad, young or old, living or dying, 
they will talk. Like seeks like by the law of so- 
cial affinities. So it was with these persons referred 
to in the text. They lived in a dark and troubled 
period of their country's history. There was a 
general declension of morals among the people, 
and the very priests that ministered at the altars of 
religion were mercenary and profane. But there 
remained a faithful few who were true to God and 
his cause. God has never left himself without 
witness. Elijah, in a fit of deep despondency, 
thought he was the only faithful soul left in all 
Israel. Adversity brings the test. These faithful 
souls, instead of running with the multitude to do 
evil, drew nearer to God and to each other in the 
time of trial. They spake often one to another. 
Their conversations are not reported in detail, but 
we know what they talked about because we are 
told what they thought upon — that was the name of 
God. God's name is God himself. What a fruit- 
ful subject for thought and speech is the Infinite 
God, as he is revealed in creation, providence, and 
redemption! If these good people had not met 
together to talk about God, they would have gone 
elsewhere to talk of other things. In the tenth 
chapter of Hebrews believers are thus exhorted by 
St. Paul: " Let us consider one another to provoke 
unto love and good works: not forsaking the as- 
sembling of ourselves together, as the manner of 
some is; but exhorting one another, and so much 



A Talk About Talk. 



255 



the more, as ye see the day approaching." The 
Methodist class meeting was born under substan- 
tially the same conditions. It took the place of 
worldly gossip, cards, and dissipation in general. 
Genuine revivals of religion are always marked by 
something of this sort. It is easy and so delight- 
ful to talk about religion when the heart is full of 
it. It is easy to testify to the love of God when that 
love is shed abroad in the heart. A dead Church is a 
dumb Church . When the Church ceases to testify, 
she will cease to live. 

Mark you, this does not mean that we are to sub- 
stitute words for deeds. There is nothing of this 
sort here. " Out of the fullness of the heart the 
mouth speaketh." When there is no heart in 
the words of a professor of religion, they are 
cold and lifeless. The voluble dispenser of cant 
maybe self-deceiving, but human nature responds 
to genuineness. A half dozen quiet, kindly words 
will go farther from one person than a whole hour 
of noisy exhortation from another. Sincerity is 
power. If we are sincere in our professed belief 
that religion is the chief thing in our estimation, it 
will be first in our speech. But how hard it is to 
talk about religion when we do not feel it in our 
hearts ! Nobody mistakes the cold-blooded formal- 
ist for the warm-hearted disciple who would have 
all the world to taste and seethe salvation which he 
has found. The best teacher in this matter is the 
Holy Spirit. We need not fall into cant or fanati- 
cism on the one hand, nor into dumbness or cyni- 
cism on the other. Give me an occasional gust of 
fanaticism rather than unbroken dead stagnation 
in the Church. Fanaticism means earnestness at 
least. A zeal that is not according to knowledge 
is better than none. But the word of God and the 
leading of the Holy Spirit will keep us moving in 



256 



Sunset Views, 



the middle of the road or very near it. That one 
thing we must do: we must keep moving forward. 
Christians of the genuine type say to the world: 
" Come and go with us: we will do you good.'* 
The counterfeit Christianity says: "If the world 
will not go with us, we will go with the world.' 3 
There is a sort that says : " We will make a compro- 
mise : we will go half way with the world and the flesh 
now; but by and by, in old age or amid the thick- 
ening shadows of death, we will enter more fully 
into the kingdom of heaven." That is a delusion 
that ought to be patent to any man or woman who 
has intelligence enough to involve moral responsi- 
bility. There can be no heaven but for the heav- 
enly-minded. Heaven is not merel}' a place: it is 
character. The kingdom of heaven is within us. 
The guest at that wedding feast must wear the 
wedding garment. The white robe of holiness 
must be woven here if we would wear it there. 
Heaven yonder means heavenly-mindedness here, 
The next suggestion of the text is that all in our 
lives that has been hallowed by the blessing of God 
is imperishable. God's book of remembrance 
holds it all. Every word of testimony, every 
prayer of faith, every song of thanksgiving, even- 
whisper of consolation or of warning — all, all are 
registered in God's book. Where are your words, 
my brother? You were not at the meeting: you 
spoke no word, you offered no prayer, you sang 
no song, you bore no testimony. You were some- 
where else. Your heart was fixed on other things. 
You ran with the world here, but somehow you 
hope to be with the faithful servants of God at that 
day. 

Let us take a fresh start from this hour. Let 
us be encouraged by the mercy and goodness of 
God. In any absolute sense we cannot undo the 



A Talk About Talk. 



257 



past. A sin is sin. The fact of sin God himself 
cannot undo. But he can and does forgive. He 
remembers it against the penitent and pardoned 
soul no more. It is blotted out in the sense that 
it will not be remembered against him. Let us be 
encouraged, but let us not be presumptuous. The 
fact that God in his mercy forgives sin furnishes 
a reason why we should avoid even the least ap- 
pearance of making that mercy an occasion of sin. 
Sin is not only bitter, but it is mean. 

We ourselves never forget anything. What is 
once in the consciousness abides. Behind the 
body and the mind there is the spirit that retains 
forever what it grasps. Nothing is lost. The 
body may change again and again. Every cell 
and every tissue of the brain may be changed 
again and again, but there is a something that 
holds the record. When old persons say they are 
losing their memory, they only mean that the 
bodily machinery by which the memory works is 
worn and moving heavily and slowly. From time 
to time they have surprises that forecast the glory 
and blessedness of the resurrection and immortal- 
ity that are to come. Just touch the chord of as- 
sociation, and the past, long forgotten, comes back 
with the vividness of fresh experience. Whoever 
in later life has revisited the home of childhood 
has realized this truth. It not unfrequently hap- 
pens that in the hour and article of death there 
seems to be a wonderful revival of the memory as 
the two worlds touch in that solemn and supreme 
moment. Thank God, we shall not be compelled 
to begin anew in the freer, fuller life to come. 
We shall take with us all that is worth keeping. 
We have memories that this world could not buy; 
holy affections that are as dear as life — memories 
that God has hallowed by his touch, affections 

*7 



2 5 8 



Sunset Views. 



that God himself has ordained and blessed. The 
old McKendree class meeting makes part of the 
memories that stir some hearts this wintry Sunday 
in Nashville. The ranks are thinning everjr year. 
Those who have gone over to the other side await 
our coming. To-day their images are before my 
mind, their words echo in my soul, and by faith 
I see their beckoning hands and radiant forms in- 
side the gates of that city of God where they wait 
for us their rest to share. They shine as jewels 
in the crown of our blessed Christ. There is 
room for us all. There is grace for us all. There 
is hope for us all. There is a call to us all to take 
a fresh start to-day. What we get we keep. Grace 
abides and abounds. The best things are the 
surest. Among the surprises that await us in that 
day the greatest of all will be that we ever doubted 
the love of God, 



A FRESH START. 



Text: "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine 
Christ, let us go on unto perfection.'' | Heb. vi. I.) 



A FRESH START. 



THE analogies of this text are not to be 
strained. The apostle would have those 
to whom he speaks to take a fresh start in 
the Christian life. They had made a 
good beginning, but they had stopped 
short in the way. They had not only not gained, 
but they had actually lost, the capital with which 
they had been endowed when they began the 
Christian life. He wished to unfold to them high- 
er truths than they had yet attained, but they 
could not receive them. They were obtuse, and 
could not enter into the loftier revelations of spir- 
itual truth. So the wise apostle halts suddenly in 
his presentation of the theme that stirs his own 
soul, the priesthood of Christ — " of whom," he 
says, "we have many things to say, and hard to 
be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For 
when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have 
need that one teach you again which be the first 
principles of the oracles of God." Shame on 
such disciples ! 3-ou sa} r . They had forgotten the 
very alphabet of the truth and life of the gospel 
long years after they had entered the school of 
Christ. They were babes in spiritual stature — not 
babes in the beauty, freshness, and sweetness of 
natural childhood, but the stunted babyhood of 
dwarfs, whose growth has been arrested prema- 
turely. Babyhood is one thing, and dwarfhood is 
another. A three-year-old girl fully developed in 
form and feature is beautiful; but a woman thirty 
years old and three feet high is a different thing al- 
together. The older she becomes the more beau- 

(261) 



262 



Sunset Views. 



tiiul, is nature's law. And so it is in the kingdom 
of God. Development must be continuous to 
reach the best results in Christian life and charac- 
ter. In the eyes of God what stunted, withered, 
abortive souls are found in the Church ! I have 
read of a man who in consequence of an injury to 
his brain lost all his mental acquisitions, and had 
to go back and relearn the alphabet and recover 
his lost knowledge by the same process as at the 
first. Is there not something analogous in the 
darkness and paralysis of spiritual perception and 
function when the soul relapses into sin and sinks 
into inaction? The light becomes darkness. The 
unused talent is taken away. The perverted or 
diseased faculty is extirpated. Read the parable 
of the talents. This truth is the very heart of 
it. This law of growth cannot be violated without 
the saddest results. The African dirt-eaters are 
horribly ugly, dwarfed creatures, burlesques of 
humanity, a distinct type of human beings lowest 
in the scale. Again, can we not perceive an anal- 
ogy? In the Church there are many who, in- 
stead of nourishing their souls with the aliment 
provided for them, go back to the beggarly ele- 
ments of the world. Instead of the Bible, they 
read trash; instead of daily prayer and medita- 
tion, their minds dwell on forbidden fancies; in- 
stead of the prayer meeting with pilgrims bound 
for heaven, they rush with the world to its Vanity 
Fairs; instead of seeking the fellowship of the 
children of God in the class meeting and in the 
quiet Christian converse of the domestic or friend- 
ly circle, they talk only of the trifles that absorb 
their frivolous minds and worldly hearts. They 
turn away from angel's food to — eat dirt! The 
Church is full of dirt-eaters. Can health, growth, 
and spiritual strength and beauty be expected un- 



A Fresh Start. 



263 



der such conditions? A house full of sick and 
stunted babies, dwarfs, repelling the world, griev- 
ing the Spirit, makes a sad caricature of Christian- 
ity in the eyes of God and man. 

There is but one thing to be done under such 
circumstances, and that is to make a fresh start. 
Go back and learn again the first principles of the 
oracles of God. Ah yes, thank God, you can do 
this ! The text is no less an invitation than a re- 
buke. Your error is not irretrievable. You may 
yet get into the right way, and never leave it. Go 
back to first principles if need be. God help you 
to judge righteous judgment! God help you to 
take right action ! What are these first principles 
of the oracles of God? Simply the elementarv 
truths and the elementary experiences of Chris- 
tianity: repentance and faith, in the experience, 
and the great facts of a resurrection and a judg- 
ment to come, with the proper understanding and 
observance of the external rites that fitly symbolize 
these spiritual truths and bring the believer into vis- 
ible relation to the visible Church. In calling these 
elementary truths and experiences, they are not dis- 
paraged any more than any beginning of life is to be 
disparaged. The tobacco planters replant when 
they fail to get a " stand" at first. Sometimes 
whole fields are replowed and resown in wheat 
when the frost or the worm or the flood has destroyed 
the first sowing. This is what we need in the Church 
— deep plowing and the sowing of the seed of the 
kingdom in hearts broken into penitence before 
God. Go back to first principles. Do your first 
works over again. Repentance toward God will 
put you in the path you have left, rekindle the 
light that has been quenched, and wake again the 
song that once made melody in your heart. Re- 
pent toward God — this includes grief for having 



264 



Sunset Views. 



sinned against his love, shame for the folly of in- 
gratitude and disobedience. By faith lay hold of 
the hope set before you. Make a fresh start. 

Let the backslider make a fresh start to-day. 
The long-suffering of God is salvation. The prom- 
ise is yours . Eternity is before you . Let the dead 
past go. By diligence in the future atone for de- 
lay in the past. Make a fresh start. 

Let the unconverted man or woman in the 
Church make a fresh start on a new and better ba- 
sis. Start on first principles, not on slight or tran- 
sient impulses or vague aspirations. Repentance 
and faith are the broad foundations of the struc- 
ture of Christian life. Here the figure changes, 
but the idea is the same, namely: that there must 
be progress or death in the Christian life. The 
folly of being always engaged in laying foun- 
dations and never building on them is exposed. 
In building you clear away the rubbish: you dig 
deep and find solid ground or rock: you lay the 
foundation; you build thereon ; )~ou complete the 
structure. You go on to perfection. Perfection! 
this is the goal. Perfection! this is the promise. 
Perfection ! this is the possibility. Perfection ! 
this is the certainty to the believer who goes on. 
He may stumble, but he need not stop. He may 
even fall, but he shall rise again. He may walk in 
darkness at times, but he will go on walking by 
faith. He will go on. 

Make the consecration once for all. Do not re- 
volve on an axis, but go forward. Leave the first 
principles in the sense that you leave babyhood 
and grow up into Christ. Leave the first princi- 
ples in the sense that you lay the foundation and 
keep building until you finish. Glory to God, 
there is a reality that answers to the ideal God has 
put into our thought ! Let us go on to perfection. 



A Fresh Start. 



265 



In traveling we meet sweet surprises. The 
Christian life is a new life forever. Every stage 
of it has its own peculiar charm. It looks for- 
ward, not backward. Forgetting the things that 
are behind, it reaches for the things that are ahead, 
and presses forward, stretching every nerve. For- 
ward, forward, forward! 



SPIRITUAL GYMNASTICS. 



Text: " Exercise thyself unto godliness." (i Tim. iv. 7.) 



SPIRITUAL GYMNASTICS. 



THE Greek may be rendered, Gymnastize 
thyself unto godliness. Spiritual gymnas- 
tics is my theme to-day. The apostle Paul 
contrasts physical with spiritual culture — 
not undervaluing the one, but duly magni- 
fying the other. Bodily exercise profits a little, 
he says. The body must be cared for. Chris- 
tianity is the religion of the body as well as of the 
soul. In both his body and spirit is the believer to 
glorify God. Christianity is the religion of man- 
liness, of the truest courage and the highest chiv- 
alry. It is not a morbid and gloomy asceticism, 
nor a namby-pamby sentimentality. Its sainthood 
is not necessarily weak-chested and flabby-mus- 
cled, though there are true saints of that type. If 
there ever was a manly saint, the author of this 
text was one. He was of truest heroic metal. If 
he had not been the chiefest of the apostles, he 
would have been the first soldier of his age . Had he 
not been commissioned to lift up the cross of Christ 
to the world, he would have unfurled Israel's con- 
quered banner and borne it in triumph to the very 
gates of Caesar's palace, or perished in the attempt. 
He kept his body under, as every man ought to do, 
but the labors that he performed and the suffer- 
ings he endured demonstrated that he possessed a 
physical organization of extraordinary vigor and 
elasticity. The bodily infirmities of which he 
speaks in his epistles were probably those which 
belonged to the sensitive organism of a man of 
genius. He knew much of pain, but not of weak- 
ness. He had his thorn in the flesh, but with it an 

(269) 



270 



Sunset Views. 



energy unsurpassed in the history of mankind. 
Had he lived in our day, he would have been no 
enemy to the gymnasium, or to the college boating 
club, or to any of the means of judicious physical 
culture with which the youth of this generation are 
favored. He loved the society of young men, and 
would have been a delightful companion on a hunt- 
ing or fishing party or a vacation tramp with a class 
in geology or engineering. It is well to have a 
good physical basis for the making of a hero. The 
man who said long ago that he had a brave heart, 
but cowardly legs, may have spoken the exact 
truth. Just think of one item in the life of Paul: 
on five different occasions he received thirty-nine 
lashes on his bared back. I never realized what 
a scourging of this sort was until last winter, when 
in the wondrously beautiful church of Las Mer- 
cedes in Havana I saw a painting of the scourging 
of our Lord before Pilate. It was terribly realis- 
tic. Thirty-nine lashes from a Roman lictor was 
a species of gymnastics which the subject thereof 
would never wish to have encored. The nerves 
of St. Paul stood this test five times, nor did they 
fail him before the judgment seat of Agrippa, nor 
on Mars' Hill, nor when the Roman headsman, ax 
in hand, came to give him his martyr passport to 
paradise. Paul's body was trained by the Greeks ; 
his intellect by Gamaliel, the great rabbi ; his heart 
by Jesus. His Grecian training was part of his 
equipment for his great work. I think it probable 
that he was an expert gymnast. In the Greek 
gymnasium in his boyhood and youth he acquired 
the taste for these things that so often flashes forth 
in his epistles. It is evident that he knew the rules 
of the Olympian and Isthmian games. When I 
was a schoolboy, we had no scientific physical cul- 
ture such as we have now, but a country boy did 



Spiritual Gymnastics. 



271 



not lack exercise. His gymnastics were home- 
made and various — horseback riding, chopping 
with an ax or hoe, plowing, grubbing, fishing, 
hunting, climbing, swimming, and sometimes dan- 
cing when the father or the schoolmaster made 
the music with a gum or hickory switch. We did 
not lack exercise in those old days, and the most 
of us had good appetites, firm muscles, slept well, 
and grew to full weight and stature. Of all these 
kinds of exercise I liked fishing best, and my boy- 
hood enthusiasm for it is unabated now. Our boys, 
if so disposed, can find considerable opportunity 
for exercise even if football and calisthenics should 
become extinct. There are forests to fell, ditches 
to dig, orchards to plant, logs to saw, houses to 
build, railroads to be run. No one needs to suf- 
fer for the lack of exercise in this land of bigness 
and open-air living, to which the stranger comes 
to make money and where the native stays because 
he loves it. 

But, conceding all that may be justly claimed 
for physical culture, you will agree with St. Paul 
that spiritual culture is the main thing to be sought. 
In the one case the model is a perfect physical or- 
ganism; in the other it is God himself — God as 
manifested in Jesus Christ. Physical culture, when 
pursued for its own sake, and ending in itself, loses 
its value, and its heroes are of the pattern of the 
drunken slugger, who is a physical and moral 
wreck at thirty. Greek culture rotted because it 
was earthly and sensual and devilish. 

Godliness is Godlikeness. That is its etymolo- 
gy. Likeness to God, therefore, is the proper ob- 
ject of all culture in this life. This likeness to 
God is comprehensible and attainable. In Jesus 
Christ God is manifest in the flesh. In Christ God 
comes close to us; we hear his voice, we catch 



2 J 2 



Sunset View 



his thought, we feel the throb of his heart, we dis- 
cover the manner of his working. "He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father" is his own state- 
ment of this great truth. God has revealed him- 
self much more fully than is realized even by many 
believers. It is true that the finite cannot compre- 
hend the Infinite. God is the King eternal, im- 
mortal, invisible, dwelling in light that no man can 
approach unto. His ways are past finding out by 
us: the scheme of his government is too vast for 
finite intelligence — the universe its theater and eter- 
nity its term. But he has given to man a reve- 
lation that he can understand: that revelation is 
an infallible guide in the attainment of godliness, 
which is the one supreme object of life. God made 
man in his own image. Ponder the familiar words 
— ;% 'in his own image. What do they mean? 
Just what the words imply, namely, that man's na- 
ture is a transcript of God's. There is nothing in 
God that is not in man: the difference is in de- 
gree. A moral being possesses intellect, sensibil- 
itv, and will. In God these attributes are infinite; 
in man they are finite. A good man resembles God 
as a beam of light resembles the sun, as a drop 
of water resembles the ocean. God is the Father 
of our spirits: we are his children. This relation- 
ship explains the incarnation and the atonement. 
Man is worth saving. All the costly agencies of 
human redemption find their explanation in the 
dignitv of man's origin, the possibilities of his de- 
velopment, and the grandeur of his destiny. The 
true object of this life is to recover the image, fa- 
vor, and life of God. This is the end sought to be 
attained by the spiritual gymnastics commended by 
St. Paul to his beloved young friend Timothy in 
our text, and which I commend to you to-day. 
This godliness is not to be attained without ef- 



Spiritual Gymnastics. 273 



fort. As in physical culture the gymnast must act 
in cooperative obedience to the laws of nature, so 
in the exercises that are directed to the attainment 
of likeness to God there must be conformity to the 
laws of spiritual life and growth revealed in the 
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These will now 
claim our consideration. 

1. The Bible is the text-book of spiritual gym- 
nastics. It tells us what God is. It tells us what 
God loves. It tells us what God hates. To de- 
spise and neglect the Bible is to despise and neg- 
lect its Author. At a certain age young persons 
are prone to follow the evil fashion set by a class 
of materialists, affecting the empty profundity of 
the agnostic and cultivating a proud contempt for 
religion. A mere smattering of science and a mere 
smattering of biblical knowledge may make con- 
fusion and lead to conflict, but the men who have 
reverently and deeply studied both rejoice in the 
perception of a harmony that becomes more mani- 
fest as both are more thoroughly understood. This 
is a disease of youth. Young men and young 
women sometimes contract this sort of intellectual 
measles, but recover and do well afterwards. There 
is no promise of heavenly light to a proud, cavil- 
ing, captious spirit, but the whole heaven of sav- 
ing truth is revealed to the humility that bows in 
reverence before the infinite God, the earnestness 
that avails itself of all proffered helps to its acquisi- 
tion, and the rational receptivity that gratefully ac- 
cepts the grace of God in the gospel of his Son. 
I commend to you, my young friends, this exer- 
cise in Bible gymnastics. Make that Book your 
counselor and guide, and in the study of God in 
Christ you will acquire that godliness, or likeness 
to God, which is the goal of your destiny as chil- 
dren of God and heirs of immortality. 



274 



Sunset Views. 



2. Godliness implies not only knowledge of God, 
but union with him. Christianity is the sublimest 
of all philosophies, whether studied in the perfect- 
ly crystallized 5 statement of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of godliness in our Lord's Sermon on the 
Mount or in the lofty dialectics of the disciple of 
Gamaliel who after his conversion became its great- 
est apostle. But it is more than a philosophy: it 
is a life. And only by knowing it as an experi- 
ence can you understand it as a philosophy. The 
method of God in religion is the inductive method. 
Not Francis Bacon, but Jesus Christ, is the author 
of the inductive philosophy. The divine order is, 
Taste , and see that the JLord is good. First taste, 
and then see. Human pride and waywardness 
would invert the process. One might as well ex- 
pect to grow strong and fat by reading a cook- 
book, or to become an expert swimmer by perus- 
ing a treatise on the art of swimming. If any man 
will do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine: 
thus Jesus Christ himself puts the great truth in 
the fewest words. Pray, and you shall find that 
there is a living God who hears and answers 
prayer; approach Christ in the desire of your 
heart and the purpose of your will, and you shall 
find rest to your soul; believe, and you shall have 
the witness in yourself. In the use of the means 
of grace you shall find the God of all grace. 
Everything becomes a channel of grace to the soul 
that is truly seeking to do the will of God. The 
conversion of the soul is reached on this line, and 
on no other: if takes place when your willingness 
to accept Christ meets his willingness to save you. 
This is the simple yet sublime act of the soul, the 
choice of the will, which is the essence of saving 
faith. Faith is choice — nothing more, nothing less. 
If you wish to enjoy the beauty and sublimity of 



Spiritual Gymnastics. 275 



Niagara Falls, you do not content yourself with 
studying a map of the route thither: you take the 
road and go to them. The way to Christ and to 
heaven is plain enough to him who would seek it 
in God's own way. Christianity is the religion of 
certainty. The language of its witnesses is, We 
know. They possess a conscious salvation in Je- 
sus Christ. The Spirit itself bears witness with 
theirs that they are the children of God. This is 
not the language of a mystic or an enthusiast. It 
is the language of experience, the language of cer- 
tainty, the language spoken by an innumerable 
company of saints who have demonstrated their 
sincerity by their spotless lives and sealed their 
testimony with their blood. Because they keep 
his precepts, the Lord gives to them that which all 
the philosophies of the world cannot impart — the 
indubitable, satisfying consciousness that they are 
the children of God. To decry such an experi- 
ence because, having neglected the conditions of 
its attainment, you have not felt it, is illogical, un- 
wise, and suicidal. Rather let me advise you to 
exercise yourselves most earnestly in this matter, 
and in the fervent devotions and blessed experi- 
ences of Christian discipleship find the demonstra- 
tion of its truth and the truest and highest blessed- 
ness of your being. 

3. Godliness implies obedience to God, obedi- 
ence springing from the love that rules a renewed 
heart. This love expresses itself in action. If it 
truly exist, it will thus express itself. "If ye love 
me, keep my commandments," is Christ's own 
test. Obedience is the test of love. The tree is 
known by its fruits. Work out your own salvation 
because it is God that worketh in you both to will 
and to do: this is the inspired formula, embracing 
the whole philosophy and practice of genuine 



276 



Sunset Views. 



Christianity, a religion of supernatural origin 
charged with supernatural energy. Xo other sort 
of religion can or ouo-ht to get a hearing or footing* 
in this age, when all current opinions, institutions, 
and policies are placed under the lenses of a crit- 
ical, sifting, changeful generation. Nothing will 
survive that cannot stand the lire. This nineteenth 
century will be known in succeeding ages as the 
winnowing period of the world's history. The 
chaff is being separated from the wheat, and will 
be consumed. In the prevalent so-called destruc- 
tive criticism, though it is often irreverent, unfair, 
and audacious, there is nothing that should alarm 
anybody except the deluded pedants who indulge 
in it. Christianity is in the battle, and will be the 
victor. The fight is so hot that onlv the true- 
hearted and heroic will stand the fire. Let the 
coward turn and flee: let the selfish and venal as- 
sume a cold-blooded neutrality: let the fool who 
says in his heart there is no God because he has 
chosen to live a godless life sink into the mere ani- 
malism which is the logical outcome of his creed. 
But I look for better things from you, to whom I 
commend the godliness which has the promise of 
both worlds, which develops the whole being, com- 
prehending in its aims, its culture, and its results 
the true dignity and blessedness of this life and the 
glorv of immortality. 

The consummate physical culture of the Greeks 
enabled them to achieve the conquest of the world by 
force of arms. But in that splendid development 
there was a fatal defect : it looked no higher nor far- 
ther than the earthly. It made that an end which 
should have been only a means to a higher end. 
And so it perished, lacking the unifying, conserva- 
tive, indestructible element which belongs only to 
that which is rooted in God, and is in harmony 



Spiritual Gymnastics, 



277 



with the principles and methods by which he gov- 
erns and guides this world and all worlds in the 
evolution of his beneficent designs. 

In this day we need, in connection with a wise 
physical culture for the work to be done on the sec- 
ular plane, spiritual athletes, men and women so 
developed, drilled, and perfected in the gymnastics 
of godliness that they shall be able to achieve first 
the conquest of themselves, and then the conquest 
of the world for Christ. And whither shall we 
look for these trained and consecrated men and 
women if not to the higher institutions of learning 
which ought to be the consummate flower of our 
Christian civilization? Physical culture for its 
own sake ends in the deterioration of the individ- 
ual and in the demoralization and destruction of 
nations. Intellectual culture for its own sake bears 
the same bitter fruit. Its strength becomes weak- 
ness, its light darkness. Nothing lives that is not 
linked to God. 

One of the requisites for a foreign missionary 
prescribed by our Mission Boards is that the can- 
didate shall possess a good physical constitution. 
This, though it may rule out some who are among 
the very best of Christ's disciples, is a wise pro- 
vision, for two reasons: first, that the missionary 
may be able to do full work and of good qual- 
ity; and second, that the heathen peoples may see 
in their Christian teachers fair samples of what 
Christianity can accomplish in the development of 
the whole being, body and soul. Sickly saints can 
find work enough at home. 

If you were asked to name the manliest man of 
this generation of Americans, you would at once 
think of Robert E. Lee, whose modesty and mod- 
eration in victory, fortitude under defeat, and sub- 
lime patience under voiceless sorrow found their 



278 



Sunset Views. 



crowning grace and glory in his unfaltering faith 
in God. And what a figure does your little swear- 
ing, swaggering cadet exhibit in contrast with 
Stonewall Jackson, the praying soldier whose 
name will shine like a ball of fire in the firmament 
of American history so long as the Potomac cuts 
its way through the cliffs at Harper's Ferry or the 
flowers bloom in the Shenandoah Valley. 

You will allow me to emphasize in a few clos- 
ing words the truths suggested by my theme. 

This spiritual culture which is commended in 
the text is not to be acquired without effort. With- 
out toil and pains you can never become a scholar 
or a soldier. The drill of the academy or the 
camp must be submitted to in order that the mind 
may be informed and disciplined, or the muscles 
trained and hardened. Easy-going indolence and 
mere spurts of intermittent exertion win no prizes 
in letters or arms. Genius and mediocrity alike 
must work for what they get in this world. And 
does any man or woman before me dream that the 
prizes of godliness that are infinite in value and 
eternal in duration are to be won without exertion? 
Do you think that the knowledge of the highest 
truths, the realization of the most blessed experi- 
ences, and the accomplishment of the grandest 
achievements in the way of Christian endeavor are 
to be attained by a life of indolence and indiffer- 
ence? You would resent such an imputation as a 
slander. 

Another truth that I would leave with you I pre- 
sent half reluctantly, lest I should seem in any de- 
gree to lower the motive of a true human life. But 
your own intelligence and candor will properly 
guard this truth which is submitted to you last of 
all, namely: that exercise unto godliness is as 
delightful as it is profitable. Duty is conjoined 



Spiritual Gymnastics. 279 



with delight. As in physical gymnastics there is 
awkwardness, and blundering, and mishaps and 
falls and bruises at the start, but dexterity, grace- 
fulness, and pleasure afterwards, so it is in the spir- 
itual gymnastics whose aim and end are Godlike- 
ness. The law of habit is a law r of God that al- 
ways works for our happiness w r hen we put our- 
selves in right relation to it. Exercise unto godli- 
ness becomes delightful in proportion to the ear- 
nestness, regularity, and perseverance with which 
it is maintained. Prayer, praise, the study of the 
Holy Scriptures, Christian conversation, and Chris- 
tian work of whatever kind — all the devotions and 
all the activities of a Christian life — become more 
and more delightful as you go forward in the way 
of duty. By exercise you acquire facility, skill, 
power, delight. When the soul becomes accus- 
tomed to the attitude of reverence, love, and obe- 
dience toward God, it is heaven on earth. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL TEST. 



Text: "O taste and see that the Lord is good." (Ps. xxxiv. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL TEST, 



IF misery loves company, so does happiness — 
especially religious happiness. The command 
to go into all the world, and preach the gospel 
to every creature, is written not only in the 
New Testament, but in the heart of every true 
Christian. A converted man is not only a recipi- 
ent, but also a dispenser, of the grace of God. 
Those who freely receive are the ones who freely 
give. This is the universal law of the kingdom of 
heaven. 

The author of this text was enjoying the great- 
est of all blessings — the favor of God. He had 
been in many troubles, and God had delivered him 
out of them all. He had the victory of faith that 
turned darkness to light, weakness into strength, 
and out of the deepest sorrow brought to his trust- 
ing soul the highest spiritual blessedness. Thus 
realizing the goodness of God, he would have ev- 
erybody to prove and to share the blessing he 
himself enjoyed. O taste and see that the Lord 
is good. He said in substance: I have found 
God faithful and gracious, a present help in 
trouble, a refuge in danger, a light in darkness. 
My heart is rejoicing in such a sense of his good- 
ness as to make it overflow in a song of thanks- 
giving and praise. I would not brood over my joy 
in solitude and silence until it stagnates. I must 
tell the news. The Lord hath done great things 
for me, whereof I am glad. Come, and I will tell 
you what the Lord hath done for my soul. The 
Lord is good: test his goodness for yourself ; taste 
and see. 

(283) 



284 



Sunset Views. 



To taste and see that the Lord is good is to un- 
derstand his truth and to receive his grace. 

I. This implies that there is a God who can re- 
veal his truth to our minds; that we have minds 
that can apprehend God as he has revealed him- 
self in his word and in the works of his hands. 
The idea of God and the worship of God are con- 
genial to the human soul. The soul was made for 
God. Its longing for God cannot be laughed, 
sneered, or argued away. The poor heathen feels 
for God in the dark, and is never satisfied until he 
has found or invented some representation of him. 
The idea of God and the disposition to worship 
him are inherent in human nature. The origin of 
this idea and this tendency is revealed in the Bible. 
Man was made in God's image. Man was made 
for God. Even in its ruins human nature shows 
marks of its high original. Under the renewing 
grace of God, the soul of man is capable of the 
knowledge of God, and may glow with adoration in 
the contemplation of the perfections of the divine 
nature. Weak and poor and freakish is that ma- 
terialistic logic that seeks to prove to us that man 
was evolved from matter. Why do not the mate- 
rialists go a step farther in the path of absurdity, 
and tell us that God himself was thus evolved? If 
man was latent in matter— if the intellect of Moses, 
Caesar, Napoleon, Newton, and Shakespeare, and 
the moral grandeur and goodness of Washington, 
were evolved from the primordial cell — why limit 
this development short of Deity? If protoplasm 
can give us Hamlet and Faust and Paradise Lost^ 
why may it not also give us the Thunderer of Sinai 
and the Judge at the resurrection? Materialism 
does not, cannot satisfy the human soul. It cries 
out for the living God. The Bible reveals God to 
our minds. Whosoever contemplates God's glo- 



The Ex^pei'imental Test, 



285 



rious perfections in the light of his own revelation 
in the Bible will find a source of pure and inex- 
haustible enjoyment. Then taste and see. Search 
the Scriptures for yourself. You will find in them 
the very truth you need. The Bible is as many- 
sided as human nature, and as many-voiced as the 
breathings of the human soul. In it every man will 
find the aliment that will nourish his own spirit, 
the truth that shall make him free, the light that 
shall guide him safely to God and heaven. 

II. But the text implies that we can enjoy an ac- 
tual experience of God's goodness— which is some- 
thing more than an intellectual apprehension of the 
glory of God as he has revealed himself to us in 
his word and works. Our heavenly Father speaks 
directly to the soul by his Spirit. The witness is 
within us. 

1. The author of the text prayed, and God heard 
and answered his prayer. He knew God heard, 
because he answered. That is prayer — the cry 
and the answer— a cry on the earth, an answer in 
heaven. The answer! When a mother comes 
from the place of her secret devotions with wet 
eyes and a face that is shining, it is because she 
got the answer. The patient look on the sufferer's 
face reveals the fact that the answer of peace has 
come from the world of unbroken harmonies. 

2. There is no real prayer without faith. Faith 
is the belief of the heart unto righteousness. Faith 
is the choice of the will. 

3. As there can be no true prayer without faith, 
so there can be no true faith without obedience. 
With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. 

4. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Obedience is 
the fruit and the evidence of love in a believer's 
soul. ' ' If ye love me, keen my commandments." 
says our Saviour. 



286 



Sunset Views, 



The root, the trunk, the branches, all make one 
tree. So faith, obedience, and love make one 
Christian life, whose fruit is unto holiness and the 
end everlasting life. That which God hath joined 
together let no man put asunder. 

There are many voices in this world that are 
crying, Taste and see. Pleasure presents her poi- 
soned cup to the young and invites the taste. Pas- 
sion excites many to drink eagerly, and they find 
death at the bottom. Curiosity prompts many to 
taste of the forbidden cup. Oh the fatal fascina- 
tion of the mystery of sin ! Unlawful curiosity 
was the original sin of our first parents, who could 
not resist the temptation to eat of the tree of knowl- 
edge of good and evil. The chemists tell us that 
prussic acid is a deadly poison: it is better that 
you take their word for it. It is surely unwise for 
a clean person to roll in the mire to learn how mud 
feels. Leave it to the swine — the mud of profan- 
ity, falsehood, gambling, licentiousness. We all 
know that fire will burn: do not thrust your hand 
into the flame to learn how it feels to be burned. 
Poison kills. Fire burns. Sin destroys. Do you 
believe it? Survey the moral wrecks all around 
you. See them in the mire of sin, never to get out. 
See them consuming in the fires of sin, or coming 
out scorched and scarred. An unpolluted, un- 
maimed manhood is a glorious thing. It is a great 
mercy to get out of the fires of sin, but it is a more 
blessed thing to keep out. Don't taste sin's poi- 
soned cup. Let not its fire kindle upon your soul. 
Don't take the first step hellward from curiosity. 
If you never take the first step, you will never 
travel that road at all. 

There is no risk involved in accepting the chal- 
lenge of the text. The author of this text is sup- 
posed to be David. He was a competent witness. 



The Experimental Test. 287 



He had seen life in many phases, and tested his 
religion under widely varying circumstances. It 
had hallowed his joys in the days of his prosperi- 
ty; it had given him fortitude under the pressure 
of adversity; it had given comfort in the day of 
sorrow ; it had inspired him with the loftiest cour- 
age in the hour of danger. He had found it equal 
to all emergencies. At all times and under all cir- 
cumstances he had found it to be good. With 
this experience, and from the holy height of reli- 
gious joy to which he had attained, he lifts his voice 
in triumph and invites all the world to the feast 
where his own soul had been fed with the bread of 
heaven. 

This is the sum of the teaching of this text: 
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Be religious 
because you can be religious. Pray because your 
prayer will be heard and answered. Obey God 
because you can obey, and because your obedi- 
ence will be acceptable to him. Taste and see. 
This is the call of God to-day by his word. This 
is the call of the Holy Spirit speaking in his still 
small voice to your hearts. This is the voice of 
the Church. Hear this call to-day. Accept the 
gracious invitation by beginning the new life. If 
you are a wanderer from the fold, come back to- 
day. If you are a disciple of your Lord, take a 
fresh start now. 



THE HOLINESS OF GOD'S HOUSE. 



19 



Text: "Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever." 
(Ps. xciii. 5.) 



THE HOLINESS OF GOD ? S HOUSE. 



THE reign of God in creation and providence 
is the theme of the singer of this short sa- 
cred song. Wrapping his attributes about 
him as royal robes, God rules in this world 
and all worlds. He is clothed with majes- 
ty and strength, glorious in holiness, fearful in 
praises, doing wonders. The visible phenomena 
of the universe are the insignia of his majesty: the 
heavens declare his glory, and the firmament show- 
eth his handiwork. These are his vesture, the out- 
beaming radiance of the all-perfect One, who is 
God over all, blessed forever: God manifested in 
nature, shining in the sunlight, uttering his voice in 
the ocean's mighty diapason, and walking upon the 
wings of the wind. But these are only parts of his 
glory: "the Lord on high is mightier than the 
noise of manv waters; yea, than the mighty waves 
of the sea." His essential, underived power sur- 
passes the most sublime exhibitions of power in na- 
ture. He rules the raging of the sea. Every drop 
of the plunging torrent of Niagara, or of beauti- 
ful Yosemite,is measured by his hand. His foot- 
steps are in the great waters, and his paths in the 
seas. But he is greater than all his works. Be- 
hind the visible creation is the infinite Creator him- 
self. Higher than the heavens is the Maker of 
heaven and earth. He is the living God, ruling in 
the armies of heaven and among the children of 
men. His years shall have no end, and his king- 
dom is an everlasting kingdom. He is almighty 
and everlasting, infinite in might and majesty. 
Therefore holiness becometh his house forever. 

(291) 



292 



Sunset Views. 



This is he argument presented in the Psalm which 
I have chosen for this service. With ample Scrip- 
ture warrant for so doing. I propose to consider the 
"word "house" in a threefold sense on this occa- 
sion of the dedication of this new house of wor- 
ship. 

Holiness becometh the house itself. This build- 
ing is God's house in a peculiar sense. To-day it 
is to be dedicated, to be set apart from all unhal- 
lowed and common uses to the worship of Almighty 
God, for the reading and expounding of his holy 
word, the administration of his ordinances, and for 
all other acts of religious worship." The conofre- 
gationwill join in the prayer that the name of God 
may be recorded m this place and that here his 
honor may dwell. This is God's house, to be set 
apartfor the most important and sacred uses. We 
need such sacred places here on earth. There is 
so much that is discordant, distasteful, and distract- 
ing that we long for respite from the commonplace 
and the secular. From the sights and sounds of a 
world marred and untuned by sin, we need a sanc- 
tuary, a retreat where we can be quiet, where we 
can breathe a purer air. and hold communion with 
the unseen and eternal. In our cities it seems to 
me this need must be more strongly felt. In the 
countrv the glorious temple of the universe is open 
to the worshiper. I have stood on a calm, clear 
dav in the holv silence of the giant Calaveras for- 
est in California: I have stood on the beach of the 
mighty Pacific where, bevond the Golden Gate, 
stretches mile after mile of white beach, and gazed 
upon the great breakers as they came rolling in 
upon the shore; I have stood upon the Point of 
Lookout Mountain and gazed upon the wonderful 
scene that lav beneath and around me. embracing 
mountain and river, city and forest: I have stood 



The Holiness of God' s House. 293 



awe-struck before the cataract of Niagara, and felt 
the delirium that seizes the soul while drinking in 
the swirling* surging terror of the whirlpool below : 
I have stood on the summit of the range that shuts 
out Clear Lake from the sea, and looked upon the 
scene of indescribable beauty and grandeur spread 
out before me — and amid these scenes of beauty 
and sublimity, I have felt as if I were in the very 
presence of God, their creator, and my soul has 
sunk into the depths of adoring love and risen to 
the heights of rapturous worship. But in the man- 
made city we need the help of beautiful, well-ap- 
pointed houses of worship. The costliest building 
ever erected was the temple of Solomon at Jerusa- 
lem, every part of which, even to the minutest de- 
tail, was according to a plan and specifications pre- 
scribed by God himself. The highest use to which 
a house made by human hands can be put is the 
worship of God. When the members of a congre- 
gation are rich enough to build costlv and beauti- 
ful dwellings for themselves, it is proper that they 
should not grudge a liberal expenditure for the 
house of the Lord. But it has been one of the glo- 
ries of our Methodism that it has been more solicit- 
ous to provide neat and comfortable places of wor- 
ship for the many than to build costly edifices for 
the few. We are still moving on that line, and will 
be for another hundred years, I trust. Methodism 
will enter into no cesthetical rivalry with other 
Churches while the unhoused, dying millions are 
starving for the bread of life. She will see to it 
that the poor have the gospel preached to them; and 
this will be her glory until she becomes an apostate 
Church. But we are able now to build good 
churches, and it is our duty to do so. We must 
not confound beaut}' with holiness, but they are not 
antagonistic. This building is holy. Its walls, its 



294 



Sunset Viezvs* 



towers, its pulpit, its chancel, its pews, its roof, its 
floor upon which we kneel in prayer — all, all are 
holy. 

Holiness becometh the worship. Mark the ex- 
pression, the worship. You come here to worship 
God, not to worship a preacher. You come here 
to worship God, not to admire musical genius. 
You come here to worship God, not for mere so- 
cial contact or intellectual or aesthetic enjoyment. 

Holiness becometh all parts of the worship, i. 
The preaching should look to holiness as its end. 
It should magnify holiness as an attribute of God, 
and insist with solemn earnestness on all that is 
implied in man's relation to such a Being. Pul- 
pit levity, pulpit slang, pulpit coarseness, pulpit ir- 
reverence of every sort, is condemned by this text. 
The preacher stands in this sacred place as the am- 
bassador of Jesus Christ. He may not disgrace 
his Master. He must deliver his message in a 
manner worthy of Him who hath sent him. He 
stands here as a watchman, and he must be faith- 
ful. No trifling can be proper in this sacred place. 
He stands here as an exponent of divine truth, and 
he must not adulterate that truth. He stands here 
before those whom he will meet at the judgment 
seat of Christ, and he must not shun to declare to 
them the whole counsel of God. 2. Holiness be- 
cometh the music. The music is an important 
part of the worship. Put worship into every note, 
or be silent. Sing with the spirit, and with the 
understanding also — this is the order. The spirit 
is put first. That is essential. Sing hymns, not 
ditties: sing hymns, not doggerel; sing hymns, 
not operas; sing hymns, not vapid sentimentali- 
ties; sing hymns, not abstract poems or didactic 
essays in verse; sing with the spirit, and with the 
understanding also. 3. Holiness becometh the 



The Holiness of God" s House. 



2 9S 



prayers made in God's house. An indispensable 
element of true prayer is a sense of the Divine pres- 
ence. The Divine presence — what does it mean? 
Stop and think. Not in bodily form, not in visible 
symbols, but really God is present in his temple. 
When we speak to him, shall it be with rambling 
thought and indifference of spirit? 4. Holiness 
becometh the attitude of the worshipers in God's 
house. It is'a beautiful custom, still kept up in some 
places, on entering the house of God to kneel or bow 
the head a few moments in silent prayer. The effect 
of such a custom can be only good upon the wor- 
shiper himself. It would help the irreligious to 
remember that they are in the house of God. Why 
so many Christian men and women fail to kneel 
during prayer, I do not know. It is conceded 
that the attitude is not essential. You may make 
an acceptable prayer standing, sitting, or kneel- 
ing, if the attitude of the soul toward God be that 
of humility and trust. But something is due to 
order and decency in the house of God. If a few 7 
kneel and others sit bolt upright staring around, 
while others compromise by bending forward a 
little, the effect is not good. It has the appear- 
ance of confusion and irreverence. There is room 
enough in these pews for men and women to kneel. 
Why not be uniform in our attitude in prayer? 
The time is coming when every knee must bow. 
Shall we wait until then? The kneeling position 
is not unpleasant when you get used to it. The 
moment you take this attitude, you feel more like 
praying. It is nature's own posture for supplica- 
tion. It is scriptural, it is helpful, it is becoming. 

Holiness becometh the worshipers themselves. 
Beautiful churches, eloquent preachers, artistic mu- 
sic, kneeling multitudes, are vain and useless unless 
the worshipers themselves are recipients of sav- 



296 



Sunset Views. 



ing grace. Personal holiness is the objective point 
in all Church work and worship. The one essen- 
tial beauty is the beauty of holiness. What is a 
beautiful house, with all the outward paraphernalia 
of outward worship, if the hearts of the worship- 
ers are black and ugly with sin? The one pur- 
pose in the founding of the Church of Christ is to 
make men holy. For this Jesus died, for this he 
intercedes, for this the Holy Spirit is given, for 
this the gospel is preached, for this alone the 
Church lives and works. What means the dedi- 
cation of a house w r here there is no dedication of 
hearts to God? You, brethren and sisters, are 
yourselves the temples of the Holy Ghost. If to 
defile this material building with sinful or irrever- 
ent behavior, or to defile it in any way, is repug- 
nant to decency, what is it to defile that house 
which is the temple of the Holy Ghost? All that 
has been expended on this house in money, in 
prayer, in toil, in self-denial, what does it all 
amount to if you are to be a worldly, ease-loving, 
unspiritual people? God save you from such a 
dreadful anticlimax and failure as that would be ! 

Holiness becometh that house in which there is 
an indwelling Christ. The curious visitor will gaze 
at the stained windows, the frescoed ceiling, the 
Brussels carpet, and the beautiful furniture, but 
God looks at your hearts. What does he see 
there ? This is the question of all questions for each 
one of you this dedication day. Spirit of search- 
ing, burn this question into every soul now! This 
holiness of which I have spoken is the holiness of 
a regenerated nature ; the holiness of right religious 
habits; the holiness that is likeness to Christ: a 
holiness that abides in Christ as a living branch 
abides in the living vine; a holiness that means a 
new heart and a new life forever. 



The Holiness of God" s House. 



Forever ! that is the word of sweetness and 
power in this text. We aspire for what is lasting 
as well as for what is beautiful and holy. We 
yearn for a beauty that will not fade, a blessedness 
that will not perish. We are hastening on to the 
world of spirits, where our companionship will be 
with holy beings forever. Let us get ready for 
that high companionship, of which the risen and 
glorified Christ is the center and the joy. When 
you go up from this church to join them, you will 
not be strangers. Up there, shining in the light 
of God, and waiting for you, are the true-hearted 
and loving ones who once walked with }*ou here. 
They toiled and wept and worshiped with us here; 
we will worship with them yonder, where toil and 
pain and grief are unknown. Let us make the 
worship here as much like that yonder as we can. 
The elements of true worship are the same here 
and there, and the raptures of heaven are but the 
full consummation of the blessedness of holiness 
here. 

Forever! This house will last a long time, for 
it is solid and strong. But it will perish. Not a 
stone or brick or timber will be left. Its very 
site may be lost. But you shall live forever. . The 
salvation of one soul is a greater thing than the 
building of a thousand cathedrals. 

Forever ! Holiness yonder means holiness here. 
Holiness forever means holiness now. Holiness 
now is the command of God. Holiness now is the 
blessed possibility of each one of us. Holiness 
now is the certain attainment of all who seek it 
with their w 7 hole hearts. Holiness now is the ini- 
tial movement that leads to holiness forever. Holi- 
ness forever is blessedness forever. 



THE PREACHER AND WHAT HE 
PREACHES. 



Text: "Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine: con- 
tinue in them ; for in so doing thou shalt both save thyself, and 
them that hear thee." (i Tim. iv. 16.) 



THE PREACHER AND WHAT HE PREACHES. 



THAT is the beginning — let the preacher be- 
gin with himself. His call to preach means 
at least the salvation of one man, and that 
man himself. Take heed unto yourself. 
There are peculiar blessings and helps in 
the work of a preacher, and also peculiar trials 
and temptations. Failure on the part of a preacher 
will be awful beyond that of other men. And his 
failure involves the ruin of others. An apostate 
or unfaithful preacher takes a place that a better 
man might fill. He is a cumberer of the ground. 
The light that ought to be in him being darkness, 
dense indeed is that darkness. He makes men 
doubt not only himself, but the truth of the gospel 
he preaches. Unfaithful preachers do more to 
promote infidelity than an army of open infidels. 
Take heed unto thyself. Be sure you are right 
with regard to the main points of a genuine reli- 
gious experience. 

I. Be sure that you are a converted man. ( i) 
How can a man preach repentance who has never 
repented of his own sins? (2) How can a man 
preach salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ 
who has never exercised saving faith? (3) How 
can a man preach pardon and peace who has never 
felt the absolving touch of the Lord? (4) How 
can a man preach the witness of the Holy Ghost 
who has never felt in his own soul that witnessing 
Spirit that gives certitude to the fact that he is a 
child of God? 

Mark you, take heed unto yourself now, remem- 
bering that the question is not whether you have 

(3 01 ) 



302 



Sunset Views. 



had these experiences in your past lives, but what 
is your state now. A backslidden preacher is no 
uncommon spectacle, but is there a sadder one on 
earth? Take up the Minutes of our Annual Con- 
ferences for the last thirty years, and you will find 
name after name of preachers who fell into sin and 
were ruined. God pity them ! The sight of their 
printed names suggests tragedies more terrible 
than ever poet invented. Their names are seldom 
spoken, and then only in suppressed whispers, in 
the circles where they once shone as burning lights 
in the Church of Christ. Believe it, my brethren, 
a man may backslide in the ministry and go from 
the pulpit and the altars of the sanctuary down 
to hell. Believe it, my younger brethren, that if 
you are not more watchful and devout than other 
men, you will be worse than other men. Your 
responsibilities are weightier: your temptations 
are greater. If Satan can smite with blindness 
or deafness the sheperds of the flock, it will be 
easy to scatter the sheep. There are dangers in 
your path — dangers peculiar to your high vocation. 
What are these dangers? You will find out what 
they are by the time your locks are as white as mine. 
What are the dangers that specially beset preach- 
ers? 

1. One dangeris ferfunctoriness. Unless he be 
on his guard, taking close heed unto himself, a 
preacher may fall into this error before he is aware 
of it. He is in danger of becoming a mere maker 
and reciter of sermons, instead of a messenger of 
his Lord proclaiming the glad tidings of salvation 
with a heart of love and a tongue of fire. The 
perfunctory preacher — you have heard him. He 
may be as correct as the multiplication table, but 
he is as dry as a coffee mill and not half as useful. 

2. Take heed unto yourself, and watch and pray 



The Preacher and What He Preaches. 303 

against vanity. If I were asked what is the easily 
besetting weakness of preachers, I would answer 
that it is vanity. Preachers are usually warm- 
hearted men who love to be loved and appreciated. 
They wish to obtain access to the minds and hearts 
of their hearers for their message of salvation. If 
they are not watchful and prayful, the personal ele- 
ment will insinuate itself into their motives and 
methods before they are aware of it. (Let him 
that is innocent in this matter cast the first stone 
at the rest of us.) The insidiousness is in the fact 
that it is assumed and admitted generally that a 
preachers usefulness is largely dependent on his 
acceptability and popularity. This being so, what 
more natural than that he shall take pains to make 
himself acceptable and popular? Acceptable and 
popular ! There is honey and deceit in the phrase. 
Take heed unto yourself along here ! Before you 
know it, you are in danger of becoming all things 
to all men in a sinister sense never meant by the 
apostle — not that you may save them that hear you, 
but that you may exalt yourself. When that sort 
of self-seeking comes in, it brings along with it the 
two ugliest snakes in all the writhing mass of evils 
that coil themselves in the natural heart — envy and 
jealousy. Envy is the meanest passion of the hu- 
man soul — "a passion," says Lord Bacon, "that 
has no holidays, a fire that always rages." The 
man who gets what you expected to get, the man 
who seems to block your upward movement— does 
a shadow pass over your face at the mention of his 
name? Envy and jealousy got into the hearts of 
the Twelve in the very presence of Jesus : and you 
remember his gentle reproof given by setting a lit- 
tle child in their midst and pointing to it as the true 
type of his kingdom, which was not of this world. 
O Jesus, set the little child in the midst of thy 



3°4 



Sunset Views. 



Church to-day ! Rewrite upon all our hearts by the 
Holy Spirit that service and sacrifice, not honor 
and lordship, are the badges of distinction in that 
kingdom of heaven which is not meat and drink, 
nor anything that is earthly, but righteousness, 
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 

3. Take heed unto yourself with regard to the 
manner in which you manage money matters 
and secular affairs in general — especially in the 
matter of the payment of debts. The disclosures 
of the judgment da)' will uncover histories un- 
speakably pathetic and tragic of the true men who 
bore humiliations worse than death in this connec- 
tion. The true men who are the victims of pecu- 
niary misfortune deserve only our sympathy and 
compassion. But there are preachers who are 
notoriously loose in their notions and practice in 
money matters. Many have been wrecked on 
this rock. 

It is hard to say whether it is worse for a preach- 
er to be careless and slipshod and untrustworthy 
in business matters, as some are, on the one hand, 
or to be secular, sharp, and money-grabbing on 
the other. God deliver the Church from both 
classes — the lazy, careless preacher without busi- 
ness sense or conscience, and the money-loving, 
money-grasping creature who carries the heart of 
a Simon Magus under the mantle of an apostle of 
Jesus Christ ! The Church has suffered much 
from both sorts. We hang our heads in shame 
because it is so. 

But let it be said just here that Methodism has 
a record on this line as heroic as any to be found 
in the annals of the Church of Christ. One of 
our preachers in California in the early days sub- 
sisted alone on crackers and water rather than go 
in debt. He grew thinner and still thinner from 



The Preacher and What He Preaches. 305 



week to week. The facts in the case somehow 
leaked out by accident, and the big-hearted min- 
ers, realizing that they had a genuine hero in their 
midst, would have divided with him their last ra- 
tion. There are men to-day in our border work 
and on hard circuits nearer to us who are making 
records as heroic as that of St. Paul, who supported 
himself by his own labor rather than risk even the 
appearance of a mercenary spirit among an un- 
taught and untrained people. " These hands, ?? he 
said, "have ministered to my necessities." Ne- 
cessities was the word. Necessities were all that 
he could procure, and all that he wanted. He ate 
fewer big dinners than some of his successors. 
And he visited more jails and more sick-beds. He 
was an unmarried preacher : it took little to sup- 
port him, and that little he earned by his own toil. 
A man who is too lazy or too stupid to make a liv- 
ing for himself in some secular business will not 
make a successful preacher. Read the passage 
in Acts xx. and you will see that St. Paul not only 
supported himself, but his assistants, them that 
were with him : possibly they were young preach- 
ers in their undergraduate course who put in all 
their time in their studies, that they might become 
master workmen, rightly dividing the word of 
truth — that is, to preach it logically, systematical- 
ly, clearly, successfully. 

But few of our preachers now follow St. Paul's 
example with regard to marriage. The rule is, 
that they marry, following Peter, who had both 
a wife and a mother-in-law, though his assumed 
successors at Rome have neither. 

A good wife helps a preacher. An unsuitable 
wife is a millstone around a preacher's neck. We 
have seen both sorts. The sort last named needs 
no description from me : they have been described 
20 



306 



Sunset Views. 



thousands of times by interested parties or persons 
of critical spirit both in the Church and out of it. 
But the other sort — God bless them ! the flowers 
of paradise have bloomed in their tracks from the 
Epworth parsonage at Oxford in old England, 
where John Wesley's mother reared nineteen chil- 
dren and helped to run the parish, down to this 
hour w^hen a thousand Methodist preachers' wives 
are making the wilderness places to blossom — 
practicing economies that seem almost miraculous 
and self-denials that redeem this half-skeptical 
and sensuous generation from the imputation of 
a gross materialism that scoffs at heroism and saint- 
liness. God bless them! Their names do not go 
into the Minutes in elaborate biographies, but they 
are written in the book of God. Take heed along 
here, my young brethren. Do not be in a hurry 
to marry. A young man studying law or medi- 
cine or learning a trade usually waits until he gets 
through before he takes a wife. Wait until }^our 
beards be grown and you have proved yourselves 
workmen that need not be ashamed. Don't mar- 
ry too soon. Be sure to marry the right woman. 
How can you know who the right woman is? A 
young preacher in Georgia said to me he knew it 
was God's will that he should marry a certain 
j^oung woman. " How do you know it? " I asked. 
" Because he wouldn't let me love her as I do, if 
it was not his will that I should marry her," he 
replied. He didn't marry her: she chose anoth- 
er man, and he waited and did better some time 
afterwards. Take heed and beware of that sort of 
logic. It has tied a millstone around many a min- 
isterial simpleton's neck. If God has anything to 
do with a preacher's life, he surely is not uncon- 
cerned about this matter of marriage. Take heed 
that your motives and action concerning it are such 



The Preacher and What He Preaches. 307 

that when you stand before the bridal altar you 
will have the inward testimony of a good con- 
science, and the presence and benediction of the 
heavenly Bridegroom, the blessed Christ. 

II. In the second place, take heed unto the doc- 
trine. Two things are pretty certain with refer- 
ence to preachers in this connection: 

First. When a preacher begins to unravel in his 
adherence to the fundamental doctrines of evan- 
gelical Christianity, he is likely to keep on unrav- 
eling until he goes all to pieces. 

Second. When a preacher begins to go to pieces 
in doctrine, a process of deterioration usually be- 
gins in his spiritual life. 

What are the fundamentals of Christian doc- 
trine? 1. The divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
2. The atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. 3. 
The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4. The 
witness of the Holy Spirit with the spirit of a be- 
liever that he is a child of God by spiritual birth 
and adoption. These are the four corner stones of 
the structure of Christian doctrine. Remove any 
one of them, and the whole building will fall. Take 
heed unto the doctrine. The doctrine, mind you 
— not your whims or fads or crotchets, not dis- 
puted points of secondary importance, nor the dis- 
putations that arise from vain attempts to vivisect 
the Christian life. The doctrine, mind you: not 
your speculations, nor those of any other man, 
however learned or plausible. 

Never cease to be a student. "Study to show 
thyself a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, 
rightly dividing the word of truth." Make new 
sermons. Put the new wine into new bottles. At 
the Missouri Conference all the preachers agreed 
to begin the new Conference year with a new ser- 
mon from a new text — presiding elders and all. 



3 oS 



Sunset View 



One presiding elder wrote to me saying that he had 
thus begun the new year, and that the leading mer- 
chant of the town was converted while he was 
preaching that new sermon from the new text. 

The fundamental doctrines are inseparably cor- 
related with the vital facts of the gospel. The di- 
vinity, atonement, and resurrection of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and the witness of the Holv Spirit to 
the believer's sonship with God, are facts proved 
by satisfactory testimony from the word of truth, 
and also certified to the consciousness of every 
person who exercises true faith in the present 
tense. We know that Jesus is divine: we know 
that he is the propitiation for our sins: we know 
that he has risen from the dead; we know 7 that he 
has given the witness of the Spirit, because we 
have the witness in ourselves. On this ground we 
have certainty. Here let us stand heart to heart, 
shoulder to shoulder. Let us get the full baptism 
of the Spirit, and keep it. A well man does not 
spend his time in studying his symptoms, but ex- 
pends his energies in doing his work. A healthy 
bov hardlv knows that he has any stomach, lungs, 
liver, or kidneys. He is physically sound and 
happy in the normal action of his bodily functions. 
So with the child of God: born into the new life, 
happy in the activities and devotions of practical 
religion, he goes on his way rejoicing, his thank- 
ful heart overflowing with the fullness of that life 
which Jesus gave, and gives more abundantly to 
them that hunger and thirst. Thev shall be filled. 
O Master, fill us to-day. O river of God, flow 
into our souls now ! 



A SUCCESSFUL MAN'S TESTIMONY. 



Text: " I understand more than the ancients, because 
keep thy precepts." (Ps. cxix. 100.) 



A SUCCESSFUL MAN'S TESTIMONY. 



THE authorship of this text has been as- 
cribed to two extraordinary men — David 
and Daniel. It is worthy of either. It is 
the language of experience; and whether 
David or Daniel be the author, it is the 
experience of a man who had thought deeply on 
the grandest themes, and. had surveyed human 
life and destiny from the very summit of advanta- 
geous opportunity. Reading, study, experience, 
and inspiration give weight and value to this " wise 
saying of old." It was the testimony of a success- 
ful man, as God and wise men measure success — 
success, not so much in the immortal fame that he 
won by his genius, earthly wisdom, or valor, but 
the highest success in the attainment of character 
— the acquisition of the imperishable riches of the 
soul. Let us see what were the means by which 
this success was achieved, this character attained. 

i. He loved the Bible^ the law of God. He 
made it the subject of reverent and constant study. 
This is what raised him above the dead level. He 
found time to read this sacred book in the midst 
of the cares of official position, the rush of public 
life, and the excitements of the court. There is no 
reading that tones up and expands the mind like 
the Bible. The student who is too busy to read the 
Bible is not the one who is most likely to be at the 
head of the class. The greatest intellects of the 
world have kindled their genius at the altar of in- 
spired truth. The Bible-reading nations lead the 
thought of the world to-day. The Bible is the torch 
of civilization as well as the lamp that lights the 
path to immortality. 

(3«) 



312 



Sunset Views. 



2. He studied the Bible not as a revelation of ab- 
stract truth, but as a practical rule of life. There 
is pleasure and profit in the study of truth in the 
abstract. There is no field of thought so broad 
as that presented to the student of the Bible. Life, 
death, heaven, hell, eternity, God — these are the 
mighty themes of this Book of books, the study of 
which expands the mind, exalts the imagination, 
and ravishes the reverent soul with the beauty of 
truth in its grandest principles and most far-reach- 
ing relations. But the boast of the text is not 
made on this account. The author claimed that 
he was wiser than his enemies ; that he had more 
understanding than all his teachers; that he un- 
derstood more than the ancients. Why? Because 
of superior native intellectual endowments? Be- 
cause of superior advantages for investigation of 
these sublime and important truths? No: it often 
happens that the richest gifts of God in the way of 
intellectual endowment are thrown away by indo- 
lent or vicious living. The largest opportunities 
are often neglected. Was it because of special 
inspiration? No: this is not the basis of the claim 
to superior understanding. Doubtless he was in- 
spired, but behind the inspiration lay another fact. 
When God inspires a man, it is because there is 
a man to inspire. Inspiration itself has its laws. 
The youthful Saul, with his heroic heart and heav- 
enward aspirations, prophesied under the divine 
afflatus among the prophets of God. But when 
power had corrupted his soul, and his once modest 
and generous nature had become envious, selfish, 
and cruel, in vain did he inquire of the Lord. For 
him there was no revelation of love — no way of 
approach was open to his darkened and corrupted 
heart; the beams of truth could no longer reach 
him, and he must await the retributive lightning 



A Successful Man '5 Testimony \ 313 

that blasts and destroys. Inspiration must have a 
medium, and conform to law. Young man, if you 
would have Daniel's inspiration, you must rever- 
ence Daniel's God and obey his word. Inspira- 
tion? Who talks of inspiration now? Who talks 
of inspiration under this reign of materialism ? Who 
talks of inspiration now when they tell us that 
Science is going to dethrone the Almighty, extin- 
guish the soul, overthrow the Bible, and set up 
the new gods of Evolution, Necessity, and what 
not, in their place ? Inspiration ! I am bold enough 
to speak the word. The world is full of it. Its 
gales blow upon every soul that is ready for its di- 
vine touch. Its light shines upon every soul that 
is looking toward God with reverence and trust. 
It prophesies from ten thousand living pulpits. It 
sings the sweetest songs that charm the ear of the 
world. It glows in the grandest thoughts that bright- 
en the printed page of to-day. It strengthens, en- 
nobles, and illumes the elect souls who are fighting 
the battles of the Lord in all the earth. Amid the 
clangor of machinery, the screaming of steam whis- 
tles, andtheroarof great commercial cities, its voice 
is heard from lips touched with the hallowed fire, its 
power felt in hearts tuned to the melodies of heav- 
en. " There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration 
of the Almighty giveth understanding." 

We are ready now to answer the question, 
What was it that raised the author of this text 
above his contemporaries in knowledge and in 
character ? The emphasis laid on one word gives the 
answer: " I understand more than the ancients, be- 
cause I keep thy precepts." The great reward is 
not in knowing but in keeping the commandments 
of God. Nay, more, this highest knowledge is 
attainable only by the reverent, the humble, and 
the obedient. This is the key that unlocks the 



3i4 



Sunset Views. 



treasury of divine truth. We may understand 

something of the omnipotence, the omniscience, 
and the omnipresence of God by the mere intel- 
lectual apprehension of his attributes: but there 
are phases of the divine character, methods of his 
dealing, that can be understood only by experience. 
The neophyte must enter at the straight gate of 
humility and work his way onward from one de- 
gree to another in the path of duty. The hum- 
blest, most unlettered Christian understands some 
things which are never disclosed to the wisdom 
of this world. The best and deepest truth is nev- 
er revealed to curiosity, nor to indifference, nor 
to pride. These quench its holy beams in the 
darkness of the carnal heart. Religious truth is 
not a matter of speculation.: it is an experience. 
It is a practical thing, just as practical as the 
learning of a lesson, or the raising of a crop by 
proper cultivation of the soil. The beauty of this 
truth is in this: that it opens the door to all. The 
attainment of the truth that blesses, refines, exalts, 
saves, does not depend upon genius, learning, 
leisure, wealth. It is not bought with money, nor 
can it be won as the prize of intellectual superior- 
itv. Like bread, water, air, sunshine, this truth 
is for all men. It is a good thing to possess learn- 
ing. . God gave us inquisitive and acquisitive 
minds, and presented the earth and the universe 
as a field for our investigation. Let us dig down 
into the depths of geology: let us soar from world 
to world with the astronomer, measuring them with 
the line of the mathematician : let us trace the sub- 
tle beauties of language in all the tongues in which 
human thought has found expression; and what 
does it amount to if it leads to nothing beyond it- 
self? The idolatrv of knowledge is just as bad as 
the idolatrv of money. The man who hoards 



A Successful Man 's Testimony. 315 

books just lor the pleasure of owning them or for 
the selfish use of them is just as poor and mean a 
miser in the sight of God as the man who devotes 
his life to the hoarding and counting of coin. The 
acquisition of knowledge for its own sake is the 
idolatry that curses and withers the life of all who 
practice it. And what are all these things in 
themselves? Roads that lead nowhere; ladders 
that touch the earth, but not the skies; movement 
in an endless circle ; vanity, vanity, all vanity. 
This was the conclusion of the man who was of 
all men best qualified to express an opinion on this 
point. He had genius, power, learning above all 
men, and they brought him only weariness, dis- 
gust, and despair, until he learned that the conclu- 
sion of the whole matter was to fear God and 
keep his commandments. By this obedience to 
God we obtain the pardon of sin, and the knowl- 
edge of it; the peace of God, and the knowledge 
of it; the love of God, and the knowledge of it. 
These things are known only to experience. They 
can be known in no other way. " He that will do 
God's will shall know of the doctrine." You can- 
not have a clear perception of spiritual truth until 
you have incorporated it into your life. There 
was a young lady who had been blind from her 
infancy. A famous oculist, after examination of 
her eyes, expressed the opinion that an operation 
might result in giving her sight. Accordingly the 
operation was performed, after which the girl 
was kept in a darkened room with bandaged eyes. 
After a few days had elapsed, the bandage over 
the eyes was removed little by little, and the shut- 
ters or curtains adjusted so as to let in a faint 
glimmer of light. From day to day the bandage 
was lifted a little more, and the light increased 
gradually and cautiously, until, all being ready, 



316 



Sunset Views. 



the blinds were thrown wide open, and the beauty 
of a spring landscape, with hill and dale, brook 
and vale, trees and flowers, burst upon her delight- 
ed gaze. So the soul, in its pursuit of the divine 
truth, often finds the first awakening painful; it 
gropes in darkness amid tears and sorrow, doubt 
and fear. It goes on obeying God as best it can, 
feeling after him if haply it may find him, the 
light increasing day by day, until by a full surren- 
der to the Master, by a vigorous act of the will 
in choosing Christ, the windows of heaven are 
opened and the believing soul is flooded w r ith the 
light and liberty of the children of God. This bless- 
ing never fails to come to all who seek God with 
the whole heart. The path of the just shines more 
and more — the speculations of the abstractionists 
do not shine at all. If we would know, we must 
do. If you would know the flavor of an or- 
ange, you must taste it for yourself. If you would 
know what color is, you must see. One who has 
never seen, by a mere description could not tell 
the difference in color between a rainbow and a 
cloud. The soul can no more be satisfied by the 
contemplation of abstract truth than a hungry man 
can be satisfied by reading a description of a good 
dinner. By the practice of holiness, holiness is 
strengthened and confirmed. 

God's word when thus kept gives power over 
error and evil. / have refrained my feet from 
every evil way: . . . I have not de-parted fro?n 
thy judgments : . . . I hate every false way. 
This sort of practical religion is delightful. 
Sweeter than honey to the mouth are the words of 
God to him who walks daily in their light. This 
is the testimony of a great and good man. Bible 
religion is happy religion. Make it yours this day 
by giving your heart and life to Christ. 



THE SUFFERER'S SECRET. 



4 



Text: " There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the 
messenger of Satan to buffet me." (2 Cor. xii. 7.) 



THE SUFFERER'S SECRET. 



IT is remarkable that this wonderful event in the 
history of the man of God should not have 
been mentioned by him for fourteen years 
after it had taken place. When he did reveal 
it, his object was not to glorify himself, but to 
vindicate his apostolic authority against certain 
false teachers who were aspersing his character, 
disturbing the Church, and leading the people into 
error. His object was not to exalt himself, but his 
divine Lord and Master, whose grace was sufficient 
for him. 

He speaks solemnly, as if he were conscious that 
he was treading on holy ground while lifting the 
veil which had hidden from the world the sublime 
revelation vouchsafed to him. 

Though Paul had never before mentioned this 
vision and its accompanying revelations, we cannot 
doubt that the glorious truths taught by him were 
communicated at least in part while he was in 
paradise. In these very epistles he tells that which 
he could never have known save by a special rev- 
elation from God the Lord. 

It is not strange that this man put a low estimate 
upon the things of this world in comparison with 
the things that are above. He had been in para- 
dise: he had seen its sights and heard its sounds. 
It is therefore not surprising that he says: 66 This 
one thing I do ; forgetting the things that are be- 
hind, and reaching forth to the things that are be- 
fore, I press forward toward the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. " For- 
ward he pressed; and no wonder, after he had 
gotten that glimpse of the glory that excelleth. 
The true faith of a true disciple, whosoever it 

(3*9) 



320 



Sunset J'/ez^ 



may be— you, even you. my fellow-pilgrim — truly 
gets a glimpse within the veil, and realizes in a 
blessed sense the substance of things hoped for. 
This secret of the Lord is for whosoever will claim 
it. The backward look of the backslider in life 
or in heart is not for such. 

It is evident that the holy apostle had been in 
danger from spiritual pride — a sin from which the 
most wonderful revelations and blessed experiences 
furnish no security. Every blessing, every endow- 
ment brings corresponding danger from perversion 
or non-improvement. Probation here on earth 
means — probation, neither more nor less. 

Therefore God sends Paul a thorn in the flesh, 
a messenger of Satan, to buffet him. Whatever 
this thorn in the flesh was, the apostle recognized 
it as providential, sent for his good. 

He prayed thrice — and got the answer. That is 
the true faith that prays until the answer comes. 
Behind every true prayer there is a promise; be- 
hind every promise is God. There is no provision 
for doubt in this gospel of his grace. 

The answer to his prayer did not come as the 
apostle expected. He prayed for rest, but the 
Lord sent grace. Grace is best of all. 

And this is the lesson for us: Infirmities, afflic- 
tions, and sorrows are better than visions or rev- 
elations, because by these he was drawn nearer to 
Christ and made to feel more of his presence and 
power. In this school of trouble he learned to be 
humble: he learned his dependence upon Christ: 
he learned to rejoice in tribulation — a differentthing 
from merely enduring tribulation. The elect suf- 
ferer whose eye rests on these closing words will 
understand. 



WHAT METHODISM STANDS FOR TO-DAY, 



21 



Text: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, 
that we are the children of God." (Rom. viii. 16.) 

" Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit." (Matt. vii. 17.) 



WHAT METHODISM STANDS FOR TO-DAY. 

[Xotesof a Sermon at Tremont Church, Boston, August 15, 1895.] 

THESE two passages of Scripture tell what 
Methodism stands for to-day. We use the 
present tense in speaking of a living or- 
ganism w r hose best w r ork is yet to be done. 
It stands for a religion of certainty — dem- 
onstrated Christianity. This demonstration is both 
subjective and objective, and it is the very thing 
which the hungry heart and eager brain of this 
generation demand. 

I. Methodism stands to-day for the affirmation of 
the supernatural element in religious experience, 
Christianity demonstrated subjectively. This is the 
religion of the Bible. It is affirmed in the pas- 
sage I have quoted from St. Paul. John Wesley 
did not invent this doctrine of the witness of the 
Spirit. He was the providential agent for its re- 
vival in a time of spiritual dearth and darkness. 
The kingdom of heaven is within you, and it is 
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 
It is a conscious salvation by faith. Conviction of 
sin, the sense of guilt and of need, the exercise of 
faith — this is the order. The final act in the gra- 
cious process is the exercise of saving faith. What 
is this faith ? It is the choice of the will in the pres- 
ent tense — choice in the present tense, acceptance 
in the present tense — choice on our own part, 
acceptance on God's part. This conjunction of 
choice and acceptance brings conscious salvation. 
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit — we 
know. This language is not strange to the ears of 



3 2 4 



Sunset Views. 



Boston Methodists. If it were so, the time has fully 
come for some spiritual descendant of Jesse Lee to 
proclaim anew on Boston Common the gospel of a 
present, free, full, conscious salvation. This is our 
blessed old gospel that never loses its freshness and 
power. Whenever and wherever there is some- 
body at hand to preach it and to live it, it will 
prove itself, carrying its own demonstration to 
every soul that tests it. One breath of the Holy 
Spirit like that which fell upon the ten thousand Ep- 
worth Leaguers at Chattanooga sweeps away the 
negations of unbelief and the guessings of the self- 
styled higher critics as the sea mists are driven be- 
fore an Atlantic gale. What we have to fear in 
this our day is not the so-called higher criticism, 
but the lower Methodism which retains the form, 
but has lost the power, of godliness. 

The people called Methodists, as well as others, 
should beware of cant. The use of the phraseol- 
ogy that expresses the fervor of genuine religious 
experience by those who have never known it per- 
sonally is cant, cant that grieves the Holy Spirit 
and repels from the altars of the Church the weary, 
hungry souls of men. Not the cold, dead cinders 
of stereotyped formalism, but the live coal fresh 
from the altar, the present baptism from on high 
that gives the heart of love and tongue of flame now. 
Now! Yes, now: for this true life of the Lord 
is new life in the Lord forever. Let us catch now. 
in this service, the spirit of the Ninety-eighth Psalm, 
and sing unto the Lord a new song. Let our song 
be a new song of thanksgiving for mercies that are 
new every day, for larger disclosures of truth, for 
holier aspirations, for larger opportunities, and for 
diviner joys, as we go on in this new life which is 
new forever. Some of us may sing in the minor 
key, but the song may be none the less new or 



What Methodism Stands for To-day. 325 



sweet on that account. The Holy Spirit makes the 
divinest music from the sighing of these " bruised 
reeds," these sorrowing hearts. With a meaning 
and an emphasis all their own they can say: £i The 
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that 
we are the children of God: and if children, then 
heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; 
if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be 
also glorified together / ' Then , under the gracious 
touch of the self-same Spirit, their song will swell 
into the higher key with the apostle : ' 6 For I reckon 
that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy 
to be compared with the glory which shall be re- 
vealed in us. . . . Likewise the Spirit also helpeth 
our infirmities : for we know not what we should pray 
for as we ought : but the Spirit itself maketh inter- 
cession for us with groanings which cannot be ut- 
tered." And then, swelling into a still higher note, 
they join in the doxology of the apostle: ' 6 1 am 
persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
northings to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, shall be able to separate us from the 
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
This is the victory that overcometh the world. This 
is the conscious salvation — present, free, and full 
— to which as Methodists we are witnesses. Let 
us all join in singing a new song this day. 

Let those refuse to sing 

Who never knew our Lord, 
But children of the heavenly King 

May speak their joys abroad. 

We will, we must sing out this new song. This sad, 
sad world is waiting to catch the melody. And the 
only way for us to keep the tune is to sing it out. 
II. Methodism stands for Christianity objectively 



326 



Sunset Views. 



demonstrated. Christianity is a good tree, known 
by its fruits. Christianity is outwardly represented 
to the world by the Church. The Church — I em- 
phasize the definite article, the Church. In the 
deepest sense of the word there is but one Church 
of Christ. One is enough. Its present divided 
state is abnormal and transient. How its promised 
unit}' is to come, God knoweth. It will not come 
by physical compulsion. It will not come by the 
surrender of soul liberty. All that truly hold to 
Christ, the Head, belong to his Church. We may 
leave to him the definition of the limits of this state- 
ment. There are some who seem to have more of 
the Divine Christ in their lives than in their creed: 
and, conversely, there are others who seem to have 
more of sound theology in their heads than of the 
spirit of Christ in their lives. 

Leaving our Lord himself to define the limits of 
his own Church, I may be permitted in this pres- 
ence to assume that Methodism constitutes a part of 
the true Church of Christ. Our last national cen- 
sus makes the following exhibit of the relative nu- 
merical strength of the several evangelical denom- 
inations in these United States of America: 



Episcopalians 459,642 

Congregationalists 475,608 

Lutherans 1,056,000 

Baptists 3,974>5 8 9 

Methodists , 4,747,130 

Colored Methodists 800,000 



You see that the Methodist is the largest of all 
the so-called evangelical denominations in this na- 
tion. All these denominations have my good will 
and good wishes. When I was a younger man 
than I am now I had a notion that the Methodist 
would absorb all the others, and be the Church in- 
deed. I have learned some things since those ear- 



What Methodism Stands for To-day. 327 

Her days. Methodism is a good tree which has 
borne good fruit in the past. But it cannot live on a 
pedigree any more than other organizations or fam- 
ilies. Near Newport, Rhode Island, a few days 
ago I saw a grand-looking apple orchard: the trees 
were very large, with huge trunks and wide-spread- 
ing branches extending over many acres of fertile 
soil. But in the entire orchard there was not the 
sign of an apple. It was a dead orchard. The 
trees were past the bearing age, their vitality ex- 
hausted. They are now fit only for fuel, and will 
make good firewood for the coming winter. Down 
in Florida last winter there was a freeze that killed 
all the orange orchards, so that there will be plenty 
of fuel but a scarcity of oranges in that region for 
some time to come. The frosts of worldliness 
chill and stunt and kill the spiritual life of the 
Church. The orchard that is not renewed by 
fresh plantings must perish. The Christian home 
and the Sunday school and the Epworth League 
must replenish the membership of the militant 
Church whose members are transolanted to the city 
of God. 

We must see to it that Methodism does not be- 
come a dead Church — a dead tree that must be 
hewn down and cast into the fire. The axes are 
at this moment busy in cutting down some of these 
trees, the axes of historical judgment, the axes of 
the judgments of God for perversion of truth and 
abuse of opportunity. God save Methodism from 
such a fate ! The fires are already kindled that 
shall consume every dead ecclesiasticism that cum- 
bers the ground. 

Again: A girdled tree does not die instantly, 
but it will never bear a second crop afterwards. 
Mr. Balfour, in his recent work on " The Founda- 
tions of Belief," suggests to all concerned that if 



328 



Sunset Views. 



the supernatural element be taken out of Christian- 
ity, though it will not perish instantly, it will have 
parted with that which has given it its power and 
true glory in the past. No future generation of he- 
roes and saints need be expected from a rationalistic 
Christianity, so called. There is no middle ground 
between an earnest and aggressive evangelicalism 
on the one side and a genteel and icy agnosticism 
on the other. A Christianity that denies the di- 
vinity of the Lord Jesus Christ is a sort of Christ- 
mas tree, on whose branches hang confectionery 
and painted toys, and real fruit that grew elsewhere. 
Such a tree is rootless and sapless. But the trees 
of the Lord are full of sap. They have roots. 
They are watered from that river of God, which 
is always full to overflowing. They are rooted in 
the enduring principles of the divine government. 
They are watered by the stream that makes glad 
the city of God, the love of God revealed in the 
gospel of his Son. Methodism has been such a 
tree. By its fruits it may be judged. 

But the Methodism of the past may be one thing 
and the Methodism of the future another. In New- 
port a few days ago a weak-faced, flabby little man 
was pointed out to me as the son of a great finan- 
cier, whose millions he inherited and whose name 
he bears. What this degenerate son of his father 
will bequeath to his children would not be difficult 
to predict. The poor little manikin, saturated with 
strong drink and glorying in the profanity and slang 
of the race track and poker club, furnishes proof 
that a pedigree is not a substitute for genuine man- 
hood. In the ecclesiastical sphere it might not be 
difficult to find the analogue. 

Not what was done by our fathers, but what we 
ourselves of this generation of Methodists shall do, 
must furnish the demonstration to our contempo- 



What Methodism Stands for To-day, 329 

raries that Methodism is a good tree, bearing good 
fruit. Our Methodist forefathers were great and 
good, but not infallible. They bequeathed to us 
in America a divided Methodism. Most of them 
have met in heaven, and some of them probably 
found it difficult to recover from their astonishment 
that they ever allowed themselves to say and do 
some things they said and did while here in the 
flesh. They have met and clasped hands in the 
city of God. They lived in troublous times; they 
had fightings without and fears within. We are not 
ashamed of these glorified fathers of American 
Methodism. They are wiser now than when they 
were down here in the midst of the smoke and dust 
and noise of the battle. If they could speak to us 
from their seats in glory, they would say: 44 Let 
the dead past bury its dead. Draw closer to Jesus 
your Lord. Close up the ranks, and go forward. 
Preach a present, free, full, conscious salvation to 
all the world, and take a fresh start for the con- 
quest of the world." 

Our forefathers bequeathed to us a glorious his- 
tory, together with some troubles and complica- 
tions. Let us bequeath to our children peace that 
shall last as long as the sun and the moon endure. 
The white flag of love is floating over all our ranks 
— North, South, East, and West. My branch of 
Methodism has initiated a cooperative movement 
for the Federation of all willing Methodists. There 
is music in the word, and I spell it with the bigF, 
as I would the alliterative kindred words — Frater- 
nity, Fellowship, Forgiveness. Let Anno Dom- 
ini 1900 see a Methodism so united that not a man 
shall be misplaced nor a dollar wasted in all the 
fields occupied by Methodists in all the world. 
This is my wish and prayer: and it is yours, my 
brethren in Boston. And why do we want this 



33° 



Sunset Views. 



consummation ? O Searcher of hearts, thou know- 
est ! Not for denominational aggrandizement, not 
for prestige in the eyes of men, not for numbers 
for numbers' sake, not for power for power's sake, 
but for the salvation of earth's millions and to has- 
ten the coronation of its King! 



"JESUS, THE LIFE. 



Text : 11 1 am 



:he life." (Johnxiv.6.) 



JESUS, THE LIFE. 

THE text is a part of that precious valedicto- 
ry discourse of our Lord just before his 
crucifixion, recorded in the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chap- 
ters of John's Gospel. He had announced 
to his disciples his approaching departure, and, 
seeing their sorrow at the separation so soon to 
take place, he addresses them in language the 
most tender and consolatory, giving them gracious 
assurances and precious promises which have been 
the solace and support of sorrowing hearts through 
all the ages, and will be while the Bible remains 
and there are hearts to suffer on earth. 

In answer to Simon Peter's question, 6 ' Lord, 
whither goest thou?" Jesus said: "Whither I go, 
thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt fol- 
low me afterwards." With characteristic impetu- 
osity, Peter exclaimed: "Lord, why cannot I fol- 
low thee now? I will lay down my life for thy 
sake." Then, addressing the bewildered and 
troubled disciples, Jesus said: "Let not your 
heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also 
in me. In my Father's house are many mansions : 
if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to 
prepare a place for you. And if I go and pre- 
pare a place for you, I will come again, and re- 
ceive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye 
may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the 
way ye know." Then spoke Thomas in his char- 
acteristic way: "Lord, we know not whither thou 
goest; and how can we know the way?" The 
answer to Thomas's inquiry not only meets the 
question propounded, but is one of those examples 

(333) 



334 



Sunset Views. 



where in a single verse or sentence the whole gos- 
pel is epitomized: "I am the way, the truth, and 
the life" — flashing upon the minds of the yet be- 
nighted and worldly-minded disciples, in a few 
short words, those great truths which they were 
afterwards to preach to the world and witness to 
with their lives. For t in these words is embraced 
all that was typified under the law, all that was 
taught by Jesus, all that was purchased by his 
death, and all that he promises hereafter. Leav- 
ing him out of view as the Way and the Truth, it is 
proposed here to consider him only as the Life. 

I. Jesus is the life of the physical universe. I 
do not wish to strain the text, or stretch it beyond 
its legitimate application, but there is the highest 
authority for this declaration that Jesus is the life 
of the material universe. In the third verse of the 
first chapter of this (John's) Gospel it is said : "All 
things were made by him; and without him was 
not anything made that was made." And in the 
tenth verse of that chapter it is said: "The world 
was made by him." In the eighth chapter of the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians the same affirma- 
tion is made. Also in the second verse of the first 
chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said 
again. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Colossians, sixteenth and seventeenth verses, it is 
said: " By him were all things created, that are in 
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, 
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or princi- 
palities, or powers : all things were created by him, 
and for him. And he is before all things, and by 
him all things consist." In the Epistle to the He- 
brews, first chapter, second verse, it is said: "By 
him God made the worlds." In the foregoing 
passage quoted from the Epistle to the Colossians 
it is affirmed that "by him all things consist" — 



Jesus, the Life, 



335 



which means that he is the preserver of the uni- 
verse that he created. The sum of the meaning 
of these passages quoted is, that Jesus is the life- 
-princtyle of the universe — the life-principle of all 
that lives. In this grand and lofty sense we may 
very properly understand his meaning when he 
says, " I am the Life." 

II. Jesus is the spiritual life of the world — that 
is to say, he is the life of every religious exercise 
of the soul, and of every religious act of the life. 
6 'This is the record, that God hath given to us 
eternal life, and this life is in his Son." " God 
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life." ''As sin reigned 
unto death, even so may grace reign unto eternal 
life by Jesus Christ." These are Scripture testi- 
monies as to the general doctrine that Jesus is the 
spiritual life of the world. "In him," says John 
summarily, "is life, and the life is the light of 
men." 

Sensibility is a condition of life. The dead see 
not, feel not, hear not. The sinner is represented 
in the Scriptures as asleep, and as dead; and is 
called to awake and rise from the dead, that Christ 
might give him light. As with the body, so with 
the soul. Physical pain, though dreaded by all 
and considered an evil, is really an exhibition of 
the benevolence of our Creator. It warns us of 
danger to our bodies, and prompts us to seek the 
means to remove it. If poisonous influences are 
at work in our body, or if any obstruction hin- 
ders the proper performance of its functions, the 
pain and discomfort apprise us of the fact; and it 
is only when the ruin is complete, and the body 
dead, or dying beyond remedy, that there is no 
longer any pain. , So with the soul; so long as it 



336 



Sunset Views. 



is within reach of the agencies of the gospel, it 
cannot be happy in sin. God by an immutable 
and beneficent law has forbidden that it should be. 
The keen pangs of conviction, then, are not mere- 
ly the smart of the avenging rod, but are the evi- 
dences that God is mercifully awaking the dead 
soul to life. There is mercy in conviction, as there 
is mercy in pardon. The analogy holds still fur- 
ther. The diseased body may be narcotized, and 
rendered temporarily insensible ; but if the cause 
be not removed, when consciousness does return 
it will be the more painful, sensibility will be more 
excruciatingly acute. So the sinful soul may be 
lulled into forgetfulness of its condition ; the opiates 
of pleasure or the enchantments of the world may 
quiet the stings of remorse, silence the warning 
voice of conscience for a season, but not for- 
ever: there will be an awakening — it may be 
amid the perturbations and gloom, the pains and 
strife of the dying hour, or it may be, alas ! amid 
the deeper horrors of perdition. How important 
that religious convictions be cherished, that the 
conscience be kept tender and faithful! Unutter- 
ably sad is the condition of the soul which is sin- 
ful, and yet feels not the pain of sin. Dreadful 
indeed is the folly of him who stifles his convic- 
tions, and extinguishes the life of his soul. Do 
you feel the pain of guilt? Seek no balm for that 
pain but in Jesus, who is thy life. Has the peni- 
tential tear begun to flow ? Let it flow on — 

Let it flow on, till all thine earthly heart 
In penitential drops have ebbed away; 

Then fearless turn to where He hath set thy part, 
Nor shudder at the eye that saw thee stray. 

You think that you are wiser and stronger 
now than you were many, years ago — when your 
conscience was tender, when your soul thrilled 



Jesus, the Life. 337 

and melted at the scenes of Calvary, and glowed 
with aspirations for a purer and nobler life. It is 
not that you are stronger, but that your heart is 
harder, your soul deadened in sensibilities, your 
religious susceptibilities abused and almost extir- 
pated. Young people, heed the voice of con- 
science. Cherish the impressions of the Spirit of 
God. Ye older ones, go to Jesus, and seek the 
restoration of your spiritual life and sensibility. 
You need not pray for your youth to come back, 
for it will return no more. You need not pray for 
wasted and misspent time to be recalled. You 
need not pray that your deeds of evil may be un- 
done, for it cannot be. But you may pray that 
your blunted religious sympathies may be requick- 
ened, that your heart of stone may be taken away, 
and a heart of flesh given you instead. ' 6 In Christ 
we have redemption through his blood, the for- 
giveness of sins, through the riches of his grace." 
" There is therefore now no condemnation to them 
that are in Christ Jesus." " Being justified by 
his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through 
him." 

Jesus is the life of our religious J>eace. 66 Being 
justified by faith, we have peace with God through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." This peace is the sweet 
sense of security from condemnation — a heavenly 
tranquillity of the soul — the subjection of all our 
passions and appetites and desires to the obedi- 
ence of Christ. He is the life of our peace. It 
is the witness of his Spirit, the sense of his pres- 
ence, the assurance of his love, the faithfulness of 
his promises — this is the foundation of the Chris- 
tian's peace. Jesus is the life of all our peace. In 
the emphatic language of an apostle, " He is our 
peace." 

Jesus is the life of all religious joy. Religious 
22 



338 



Sunset Views, 



joy is the highest development of peace. The 
sources of our religious joy all center in Jesus. 
Through him the streams of a divine life pour into 
the soul of the believer, filling it with God and 
glory, giving a persuasion of the all-sufficiency of 
Jesus as the Sacrifice for sin ; giving communion 
with God through him, to know the love of Christ, 
which passeth knowledge, the anticipation of his 
second coming, and the rest that remains for his 
followers — these are the sources of the Christian's 
joy, and all center in Jesus, who is our life. 

Jesus is the life of our comforts and consolations. 
The sorrowing Christian heart turns to the suffer- 
ing Saviour for solace 9 and turns not in vain. An- 
guish that no earthly balm can soothe finds in Geth- 
semane and Calvary a divine sympathy and fellow- 
ship, and in its deepest sorrows the soul throws 
itself on the bosom of the Man of Sorrows. The 
weeping, tempted, suffering, dying Jesus is touched 
with a feeling of our infirmities, and the suffering 
soul finds its best and truest consolation in com- 
munion with him. 

He is the life of the believer's hopes. Every 
hope that brightens the pathway we tread through 
life, and throws its radiance beyond the darkness 
of the grave, centers in Jesus. Do we hope for 
grace to sustain us? That grace must come 
through Jesus. Do we hope for comfort in sor- 
row? We must receive that comfort through Je- 
sus. Do we hope for support in death ? That sup- 
port must come through Jesus. 

Jesus is the life of all religious activity. 66 The 
love of Christ constraineth us," says the apostle. 
An indwelling Christ is the inspiration of all healthy 
religious activity. This love is the essential ele- 
ment of all religion, devotional and practical. It 
is the motive to obedience. "We love him be- 



Jestts, the Life. 



339 



cause he first loved us " — and from this love springs 
every act of obedience. 66 If ye love me, keep my 
commandments." If we love him, we will keep 
his commandments; we will delight in his service. 
We will find that his commands are not grievous ; 
we will realize that "his yoke is easy, and his 
burden light." The service of Christ is not oner- 
ous task-work, but a labor of love. Love's labors 
are always easy. Jacob's fourteen years of service 
for Rachel seemed but a few days for the love that 
he had to her. The mother never wearies in her 
ministries to her child. So the love of Christ in- 
vigorates and sustains the believer in the discharge 
of duty. Animated by this love, he is ever ready 
to deny himself and take up his cross, and follow 
his Lord. Jesus is the life of all true religious ac- 
tivity. May all his followers enter into the enjoy- 
ment of the fullness of that life ! A Christian ac- 
tivity flowing out of this principle will be healthful 
and abiding. Based upon any other foundation, 
it will be transient in duration, and barren of all 
good fruits. The love of Christ in the heart is as 
a fire within that rouses all the activities of the 
spiritual nature, and impels a man forward in the 
way of holy endeavor. Vain are the expostula- 
tions and entreaties of the pulpit to a Church des- 
titute of this the vital element of Christian experi- 
ence, this real source of religious activity — the 
love of Jesus. This is the only life of the soul. 
Without this life there is no vitality, and conse- 
quently no motion. The great need of these times, 
then, is to have the love of Christ rekindled in the 
hearts of his followers. Filled with this love, and 
overflowing, the Christian heart seeks the expres- 
sion of its affection in all possible endeavors to pro- 
mote his cause. Love is the strongest principle that 
moves a human soul to action. With this principle 



34° 



Sunset Views. 



of love to Christ enthroned in the heart, men are 
capable of overcoming any difficulties, of enduring 
any privations, afflictions, and agonies. Sustained 
by this love, the believer goes down into the valley 
of the shadow of death fearing no evil, feeling that 
" neither life nor death," " nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate him from the love of God 
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." In the lan- 
guage of the inimitable allegorist, he can say as 
he goes down into the river of death: " This river 
has been a terror to many; s yea, the thoughts of it 
also have often frightened me; but now methinks 
I stand easy. My foot is fixed upon that upon 
which the feet of the priests that bare the ark of 
the covenant stood while Israel went over Jordan. 
The waters are indeed to the palate bitter, and to 
the stomach cold ; yet the thoughts of what I am go- 
ing to, and of the convoy that waits for me on the 
other side, do lie as a glowing coal at my heart. 
I see myself now at the end of my journey: my 
toilsome days are ended. I am going to see that 
head which was crowned with thorns, and that 
face which was spit upon for me. I have former- 
ly lived by hearsay and faith ; but now I go where 
I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in 
whose company I delight myself. I have loved to 
hear my Lord spoken of; and wherever I have 
seen the print of his shoes in the earth, there I 
have coveted to set my foot too. His name has 
been to me as a civet-box; yea, sweeter to me than 
all perfumes. His voice has to me been most 
sweet, and his countenance I have more desired 
than they that have most desired the light of the 
sun. His words I did use to gather for my food, 
and for antidotes against my faintings. He hath 
held me and kept me from mine iniquities; yea, 
my steps hath he strengthened in his way." Yes, 



Jesus, the Life. 



34 1 



the love of Jesus is the strongest principle of hu- 
man action that can move the human heart. This 
love is the life, the essential element, of every true 
religious desire, emotion, purpose, and act. 

III. Jesus is not only the life of our graces, our 
peace, our joys and hopes on earth, but will be 
the life of our glorified bodies and redeemed spir- 
its forever. 

Immortality was a dream, at most a dim hope, 
to the heathen. No effort of human intellect 
could penetrate the veil which hides the future 
state. Beyond the darkness of the tomb there 
shone no ray of light. From its gloomy chamber 
came no voice of assurance or certainty that man 
should live again. Of the countless millions who 
have lived and died on earth, not one had come 
back with a message from beyond the grave. Im- 
mortality was at best but a guess — " a leap in the 
dark." With the most of the ancients, death and 
annihilation were the same thing. 

When Jesus said, "I am the Life " he spoke the 
word which listening humanity had been listening 
to hear for a hundred generations. He " brought 
life and immortality" to light through his gospel, 
in which we find the first distinct revelation of a 
future state. He lighted up the darkness of the 
grave, and beyond showed us the city of God. 
He not only made known the fact of a future life 
as certain of realization as it is blessed in its char- 
acter, but he demonstrated its verity and led the 
way to it by his own resurrection from the dead. 
Such is the indissolubility of the union between 
Christ and his disciples, that his resurrection is 
the type and infallible pledge of theirs. He is the 
head, they are the members. He is the vine, they 
are the branches. As he rose, they shall rise. 
" Because I live, ye shall live also." " They who 



Sunset Views. 



receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of 
righteousness, shall reign in life by Jesus Christ." 
66 This/' says John, in his first epistle, "is the rec- 
ord, that God hath given to us eternal life, and 
this life is in his Son." Eternal life here means 
eternal existence and eternal happiness. This hap- 
piness will be completed by the resurrection of the 
human body and its reunion with the soul at the 
general judgment. Philosophical difficulties are 
urged against this doctrine of the resurrection of 
the body, but they are of no weight to the well- 
instructed mind of a true believer. Resurrection 
is certainly not a greater miracle than creation. It 
is no more beyond the power of God to perform 
the one than the other. "All things are possible 
with God." He hath promised the resurrection 
of the body, and he will perform it. 

To some it may appear to be a low and material- 
istic view of our heavenly state, but I confess there 
is unspeakable comfort to me in the doctrine of the 
resurrection of the body. Jesus took upon him 
our whole nature, and redeemed our whole nature. 
He has saved our souls from condemnation and 
perdition, and rescued our bodies from the dis- 
honors of the grave. We love our bodies. We 
love the bodies of our kindred and friends: it is 
the body that establishes their identity with us; 
through the body we hold converse with them, and 
with the body is associated every sacred and ten- 
der remembrance of them when they are gone. 
Science may tell us that these bodies are only so 
much earth, which will soon mingle again with its 
kindred dust, and be reproduced in other forms. 
We may be told that they are but the caskets that 
held for a season the jewels of our souls. We 
know it to be true ; but what a mockery of true love 
is in the thought that when the coffin-lid is closed 



fastis^ the Life. 



343 



above the faces and forms we love there is no 
hope that we shall ever see them again. But how 
unspeakably precious then is the fact of the death 
and burial of the human body of Jesus, its resur- 
rection and ascension into heaven. We need not 
dread to commit our bodies to the keeping of the 
tomb since he has lain there. " Since by man 
came death, by man came also the resurrection of 
the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in 
Christ shall all be made alive. But every man 
in his own order: Christ the first fruits: after- 
wards they that are Christ's at his coming." 6 6 If 
we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so 
them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him." He will change our vile body and make it 
like unto his own glorious body — free from infirm- 
ity, free from suffering, free from decay. 

If this be death, why fear to die? Why fear to 
go from darkness to light, from toil to rest, from 
pain to joy? 



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